By Police1 Staff
FORT WORTH, Texas — A call turned personal for an officer who helped a woman with dementia find her way home on Friday.
Officer Ryan Bowlen was stopped by Frank Garner, who had discovered his mother, Gerri Stewart, was six miles away from home, NBC DFW reported.
Garner checked a cell phone app that monitors Stewart’s location and found her walking in a busy intersection in Fort Worth.
“I did everything I could to try to get her in the vehicle with me,” Garner said. “She would not.”
He left his mother to find an officer and stopped Bowlen who immediately began searching for Stewart.
Bowlen said when he encountered Stewart, he thought of his own grandmother who has dementia as well.
“I want to be able to walk that path with Miss Gerri and let her know she’s not alone,” Bowlen told the news station. “To approach someone like that, listen, just listen. Relate to them on a personal level.”
Bowlen said anytime “Miss Gerri” wants to walk with him he’ll be more than happy to join her.
“You’re not the guy who just showed up on scene and put the guy in handcuffs,” Bowlen said."You get to go home at night and say, ‘I really helped that person,’ and that’s a great feeling.”