A very belated public “THANK YOU!” to Officer Howard of the Chicago Police Department

 

(I wrote the first draft of the following in late May of year 2022 but I decided that publicly posting it at that time would be a violation of my brother’s right to privacy.  Since my brother has now passed on I feel free to post this tribute regarding Chicago Police Department’s Officer Howard.)

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It is my understanding that on late Friday 05/20/2022 my older brother got lost while driving from a visit to his childhood hometown in Lake County, Illlinois, on his way back to his current residence in Ripon, Wi.  On Saturday 05/21/2022 the sister of his significant-other filed a Missing Person / Endangered report with the Ripon PD and a Silver Alert was issued.  

According to license-plate-photo information gathered by the tollway and the many other law enforcement agencies in Cook County, Il, my brother was apparently driving in circles all over the Chicagoland area from Saturday through Sunday.  On Late Sunday or early Monday he somehow lost track of where he had parked the car after he made a stop for some reason or another. CPD noticed my brother late on Monday afternoon when he was trying the doors on parked vehicles (I’ll assume that those cars must have looked similar to the one he had lost track of) during his efforts to find his car.  CPD quizzed him and then ran his name; it popped up on the Silver Alert Missing / Endangered notifications.  

Officer Howard of Chicago PD (another of the countless unsung true American Heroes in Law-Enforcement) called late Monday afternoon (05/23/2022) and notified us that they had located my older brother. Officer Howard had wasted no time in ordering an ambulance to take my brother to Advocate Illinois Mesonic Medical Center and she took the trouble to call me back a couple of times (or more) to confirm the details on where I had to go.  Officer Howard, you are indeed a pro!  I cannot imagine anyone handling the situation any better than you did.  

(The circled pin on the map is where I believe CPD recovered the car my brother lost.  Upper right of that is a circle showing where CPD took my brother for medical attention.)

A younger brother and I then drove to the hospital (IMHO, GPS really is ESSENTIAL for travel nowadays) and (after a few hours of waiting for the medical test results to come back from the lab) we brought my older brother home (to stay with another brother in Lake County) very late on Monday night.  Hopefully my older brother will be receiving further medical attention; age is not being very kind to him.

My older brother’s significant-other and her-sister handled the details regarding retrieval of my brother's vehicle from the CPD.  

CPD and Office Howard, our family is sincerely (and forever) appreciative,

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/JZ