Nancy Guthrie, old lady missing
Good news for seniors, we're on the sweet side of statistics for missing persons
Are you obsessed with TV news coverage of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of NBC’s Today co-host Savannah Guthrie who apparently was taken from her Tucson home on February 1? I am, in part because it’s rare to see a senior crime victim garnish so much media attention.
Liam Neeson may be in our age cohort — he’s 73 — but don’t expect him to star in a film with an 80-something who gets Taken.
I went to the FBI “Most Wanted” page on “kidnapped & missing persons” — and can report that there is good news for those of us North of 65. We are not likely to get kidnapped.
Among the more than 120 individuals whom the FBI placed on the page, there were many women, and many women of color, but only a small number are in Nancy Guthrie’s advanced age cohort."**
It makes sense when you think about it. Like other 80 somethings, Guthrie faced mobility issues and that makes for a lot of work to care for her. She also has been on a daily regimen of drugs to treat her heart and high blood pressure. So she is high-risk.
To her credit, Nancy Guthrie seems to have done many things right for a senior woman who lives alone in a remote area. She had a doorbell camera, which authorities were able to use to tease video of a masked and gloved intruder in the wee hours.
And Mrs. G had friends who looked after her. When she failed to appear at a virtual church service at a friend’s home that morning, the friend contacted the Guthrie family and the family alerted authorities. As a result, the investigation began on the day of the crime.
I wonder what would have happened if Nancy Guthrie’s daughter were not a super-famous, and tenacious, TV journalist. But then, she probably would not have been abducted.
I would like to think that even if Nancy Guthrie did not have a famous daughter, law enforcement would have pursued the case in short order, because the doorbell camera captured a man with ill intent at her door, and because her friend rightly contacted the family.
Lesson learned: The older you get, the more it pays to plan for the worst.
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**The other oldsters on the FBI list are:
Paul Edwin Overby, Jr., who is 83. Overby disappeared while researching a book in Afghanistan in 2014.
Retired FBI agent Robert A. Levinson was abducted in Iran in 2007. He was declared dead in absentia in 2020, but remains on the FBI missing page. If alive, he would be 72.
Indiana mother Donna Hatfield, who suffered from dementia, went missing when she was 72 in 2019.
This is unlike any kidnap story I have seen before. Two weeks out, it is a mystery. And as you know, when the networks send crews to cover a crime, they have to cover the crime. Americans seem transfixed, so...
Debra, l am heart broken for her story and l am hoping to hear a happy development every day. On the other hand, l hear nothing but this news on CNN, the US network that we have at home. It is like all other news ended and there is nothing else to report. Is it because when it bleeds it leads??