Published: September 05, 2008 09:15 pm      

WILSON: Missing woman found close to home

Brother finds elderly woman, missing for two days, in the thick woods near her house

An elderly woman who disappeared for nearly two days was found safe and alive in the woods about a mile from her home Friday.

Lucille Schurr, 83, disappeared from her Cambria-Wilson Road home sometime between Wednesday night and Thursday morning.

She was found in the woods Friday evening by her brother, a Vietnam veteran who had joined the search only 20 minutes before.

Schurr, who is in good condition, is now at Erie County Medical Center, recovering from her two-day ordeal.

Hundreds of volunteers and officers from several local agencies spent most of Thursday and all of Friday searching for Schurr.

At a petite 5 feet tall, Schurr has hearing and sight problems and suffers from dementia.

The family had called the sheriff’s department to report Schurr missing about 12:30 p.m. Thursday, after no one had spoken to her since 8:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Chief Deputy James Voutour said Schurr had locked the house and taken her keys with her, but had left her purse behind. Family members thought she may have gone looking for her cat.

Her youngest brother, 60-year-old Mike Duboc, a Vietnam veteran who lives on the Tuscarora Indian Reservation, arrived to search for her about 5 p.m. Friday.

“Nobody was finding her, so I had to come down,” Duboc said. “I asked where she’d usually go, and they said out back. So I started walking around out there.”

About 20 minutes later, Duboc spotted what looked like a path made by someone crawling through the brush.

“You could tell it was a human crawling in the foliage, and not a deer or a dog,” he said.

Seconds later, he came across Schurr, sitting on the ground.

“She was sitting like she was looking for her glasses,” he said. “I asked her if she was OK and if she knew who I am. She looked at me and she said, ‘Yeah, you’re Mike.’ ”

Duboc said he asked Schurr what her phone number was, and she told him.

Schurr’s daughter, Yvonne Peloquin, was at her mother’s house preparing for another night without any news.

Then, the phone rang — it was Duboc, calling from the woods on his cell phone.

“He called me and he goes, ‘I have your mother on the phone, you want to talk to her?’ ” Peloquin said, laughing. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, it’s a whacko.’ ”

Rescuers brought Schurr out of the woods about 6:30 p.m., riding in the back of a Wilson Fire Company ATV, already hooked up to an IV and oxygen.

Several family members surrounded her as she was placed on a stretcher and into a waiting ambulance. She was then taken to ECMC by Mercy Flight.