(Photo's: Detroit Lakes Police Department)
DETROIT LAKES (KFGO) – A Minnesota State Trooper is credited for finding and saving the life of a missing Detroit Lakes woman.
The elderly woman with dementia was reported missing after leaving the 1400 block of Madison Ave. in Detroit Lakes just after 1:30 p.m., Thursday.
Trooper Mike Lundeen heard the radio traffic about the missing woman and came to Detroit Lakes to help in the search. He and police officers checked the building where the woman had left and the surrounding parking areas.
Lundeen then got out of his squad car and began checking for footprints and eventually found tracks that went out onto the lake ice and headed west. He found an area where it appeared the person leaving the footprints had fallen. The tracks continued west as far as he could see. He went back to his car and drove several houses west, got out, went to the lake, and picked up the tracks again. He then heard something and found the woman lying on the rip-rap shoreline.
It was getting dark and temperatures were in the single digits and dropping. Lundeen called for help and worked to try to keep her warm until EMS personnel arrived and transported her to the Detroit Lakes hospital for treatment.
Detroit Lakes Police Chief Steve Todd says “Without him being in that place at that time, following that “feeling”, and sticking with it through the cold and the snow, our missing woman would not have been found. So, Thank You Trooper Mike Lundeen, you made the difference.”
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