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Man missing in Spring Hill found by deputies
By JAMIE JONES, Times Staff Writer
SPRING HILL -- Billy Claude is skinny, has salt and pepper hair and takes medication to help his mind stay clear. He is calm and pleasant, but sometimes the 64-year-old man wanders away, and has been known to sit inside strangers' cars or crawl beneath them. On Sunday, Claude arrived at a family gathering in Spring Hill wearing blue jeans and a green jacket. He walked outside to smoke a Black Mild cigar, and in the three minutes that his daughter Debbie Kunde stepped inside Claude disappeared. His family spent an hour searching around Galgano Lane, but called the Sheriff's Office at about 6 p.m. Sheriff's dogs sniffed the ground, and deputies searched nearby neighborhoods, grocery stores and bars. No Claude. A helicopter lifted into the air to search but landed at about 8:30 p.m. because of heavy fog. As the temperature dipped, sheriff's supervisors worried that Claude would freeze in the night. Claude needed regular medication, lacked money and was not familiar with Spring Hill, because he lives in Pasco County, authorities said. Out of options, sheriff's supervisors decided to use the county's emergency notification system, a computer server with 24 lines that sends a voice recording to residents. Authorities isolated a 3-mile area and at about 11:30 p.m. the first of 9,000 telephone calls went out. In a prerecorded message, authorities told residents that Claude was missing and left a number in case anyone saw him. Because the system can send only 2,000 calls every 42 minutes, some residents were awakened at 2 a.m. by the telephone. And some were upset. About 50 people called the Sheriff's Office on Monday to complain. Most of those people live in exclusive gated communities, including Timber Pines and Pristine Place. "We're sorry for the inconvenience," said Chief Deputy Michael Hensley. "But we felt it was appropriate. A person's life is worth a phone call." Deputies found Claude at about 4 a.m. Monday near the intersection of Northcliffe Boulevard and Cartee Avenue, just outside of the 3-mile radius. He had a mild case of hypothermia and was taken to a local hospital. He is doing fine, authorities said. His family could not be reached on Monday. Timber Pines resident Jack Ohle said he did not understand why he got a call from authorities, because his community is completely protected by a wall and anyone entering must pass one of three guarded stations. "A 60-some-year-old man with Alzheimer's -- I don't think he could climb over," Ohle said. "If they had been calling about a tornado or some other event that would affect a broader number of people, I might have felt a little different than the calling about a single person." Ohle said he was not angry but confused, and wonders how often authorities might use the system. Claude's case represented the first time the Sheriff's Office used the system to call thousands of residents. The only other time deputies can recall is alerting a small neighborhood about a troubled juvenile on the loose. The system, purchased by the county in 1999, has been used 15 to 20 times since then, said Mark Tobert of the Emergency Management Department. He said the county most recently called residents living along the Withlacoochee River about predicted water levels during flooding. The system also has been used to warn of severe weather, and on a smaller scale to tell residents about paving projects, road closures or other events affecting their neighborhoods. Tobert said the system is extremely helpful for quickly contacting a large number of people. And he said the county is working with Hillsborough, Polk and Pinellas counties so that they can link their systems and help each other when many calls must be made in a certain area. Hensley said the Sheriff's Office will evaluate how the system worked in Claude's case. "We will not overuse the system," he said. "But we were dealing with a man's life. Had it been someone else's mother or spouse or small child -- that's what the system is there for." -- Jamie Jones covers law enforcement and courts in Hernando County and can be reached at 754-6114. Send e-mail to jjones@sptimes.com.
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