PROVIDENCE — On Christmas Eve 2007, 93-year-old Katherine Michael told her son she planned to do some Christmas shopping before meeting her family at a holiday church service near her home in Natick, Mass.

She never arrived.

Hours later, police in Seekonk stopped Michael when someone reported seeing an erratic driver. The elderly woman was disoriented and unable to say how she got there, almost 50 miles from her home.

Advocates for the elderly say Michael’s story is common, if alarming.

Seniors who suffer from varying levels of dementia frequently get confused and wander off. Some don’t make it past the neighborhood, while those who are more mobile or have access to a car can make it dozens if not hundreds of miles, often without realizing they’ve even left their hometown.

About 24,000 Rhode Islanders suffer from Alzheimer’s disease according to the National Alzheimer’s Association. Across the country, 13 percent of people over 65 suffer from the illness. As the baby boomers continue to age, the organization estimates that 10 million Americans in that generation will develop Alzheimer’s.

Sixty percent of them can expect to wander at some point.

Faced with those statistics and a growing list of local cases, advocates for the elderly say the state needs to get serious about how it deals with missing seniors. Two bills before the General Assembly propose creating a statewide notification system for the elderly not unlike the Amber Alert system for missing children.

Known in other states that have enacted it as “Silver Alert,” the system would require the state police to notify broadcast media, coordinate law enforcement search efforts and trigger automated call systems each time an elderly person disappears and is deemed in danger.

The bills have already passed the Senate and are headed for hearings in the House, despite objections from the state police, who say the policy could overwhelm them.

Currently, Rhode Island relies on a less-intense “safe alert” notification program that allows families to register an elderly relative with the local police, providing a photo and medical history to be kept on file. Some families also enroll loved ones in a national “MedicAlert + Safe Return” program which equips participants with identification bracelets.

The Alzheimer’s Association and the Rhode Island Health Care Association applaud the efforts of local police departments, but say it’s not enough to merely keep information on record.

“With Alzheimer’s or related dementia, there is a high likelihood that if they’re not found in 24 hours, they will be found dead,” said Marge Angilly, family services director at the Rhode Island Chapter of the national Alzheimer’s Association.

Notifying television and radio stations so they can broadcast photos or descriptions would help get all Rhode Islanders on the lookout as soon as possible, she said.

“This is not supposed to be a full Amber Alert. It just ensures that the media gets the word out that an elder with this form of dementia is lost,” said Sen. Rhoda E. Perry, chairwoman of the Health and Human Services Committee who sponsored one of the two bills. Senate Finance Chairman Stephen D. Alves, who sponsored the second, almost identical piece of legislation, said he did so at the behest of the elderly affairs community. (A third bill on the House side was introduced, but never heard in committee.)

This is not the first time that elderly alert proposals have found their way to Smith Hill, but it may be the first time they’ve gained this kind of momentum.

“I think the advantage of these bills is that they create a coordinated system that’s less fragmented than what we have now,” said Cynthia Conant-Arp, executive director of the Hope Alzheimer’s Center in Cranston.

The state police have strongly objected to the Perry proposal, saying it would shift the burden of coordinating all missing elderly persons cases from 38 local police departments to the state and “overwhelm the resources of the State Police,” Col. Brendan P. Doherty wrote in a letter to lawmakers this spring.

A financial analysis by the Senate fiscal adviser suggests that there would be no additional costs for the state police because the Amber Alert program is already in place and operated by that department.

But Doherty said he also worries that a broad-based notification system, if activated too frequently, could cause Rhode Islanders to tune out the reports, “watering down” the effect they have on public consciousness and “diminish[ing] the same type of warnings that are imperative when an abducted child’s life is in danger.”

Eventually, the public might just stop listening.

Advocates for the elderly say they’re willing to work with the state police to establish a protocol that will get the word out without inundating the police force.

There may be times when a full alert need not be activated, said Virginia Burke, president and chief executive officer of the Rhode Island Health Care Association.

“But you need to act quickly because the further someone wanders, the less likely you will get them home safe and sound,” she said. “Speed is of the essence.”

— With Journal archive reports.

cneedham@projo.com