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2007 Pedersoli,Waldir August 24,2007; Lanham,Maryland
Topic Started: Nov 24 2007, 11:59 AM (152 Views)
oldies4mari2004
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Family struggles with father’s disappearance
Waldir Pedersoli wandered away from his home three weeks ago. As the wait has mounted, so has the worry.
by Jonathan Stein | Staff Writer
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Bryan Haynes⁄The Gazette
Heleni Pedersoli of Lanham holds a photo of her husband, Waldir, along with son John and daughter Miriam Pinheiro at her sons home in Lanham. Waldir Pedersoli is a 75-year-old man with Alzheimer’s who wandered away from his Lanham home on Aug. 24.


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John Pedersoli never thought he would be calling the Maryland Medical Examiner and the Washington D.C. morgue every day for updates on recent ‘‘John Does.”

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When his Alzheimer’s diagnosed father, 75-year-old Waldir Pedersoli, wandered away from his home on the 9400 block of Presley Place in Lanham on Aug. 24, John Pedersoli figured his father would be found within the day, just like the other three times he had wandered off.
But this time was different. This time, after three weeks of searching by his family and District 2 police, Waldir Pedersoli is still nowhere to be found.

‘‘It’s not a real good feeling when you’re calling morgues over and over again,” said John Pedersoli, who works as a pilot for United Airlines and lives in Greenbelt. ‘‘Based on how slow he walks, we were figuring he’d pop up sooner or later. We’re kind of really fearing somebody with not so good intentions may have taken him.”

The family’s hope of finding him alive is beginning to dwindle.

‘‘As each day goes by, it just gets worse and worse,” Waldir’s wife, Heleni Pedersoli, said. ‘‘We want him back somehow. We want closure.”

The couple’s 48th wedding anniversary was on Sept. 5.

‘‘We were really hoping to get some good news so we could truly celebrate,” said Miriam Pedersoli, Waldir’s daughter.

Pedersoli was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease three years ago in 2004, when his family began to notice that he was becoming increasingly forgetful and getting lost driving to places he had been to many times before.

According to Pedersoli’s wife, his Alzheimer’s was not his only medical concern. She said he felt pain when walking and shifting his weight when lying down, had difficulty seeing and continued to have heart problems after triple bypass surgery in 1995.

‘‘He needed a lot of help just to get in a car,” John Pedersoli said. ‘‘He had great difficulty even sitting in a chair. If he’s out there alive right now, somebody has to be assisting him.”

On the day of his disappearance, Pedersoli was being taken care of by his youngest son, Marcello, who went downstairs to watch television around 3 p.m. while his father napped upstairs. When Marcello went to check on his father around 4 p.m., he wasn’t in his room.

Marcello frantically searched the house and then the neighborhood before calling police, who arrived a short time later at around 5:30 p.m.

Police continued to search late into the night on Aug. 24 and returned the next day when they were joined by Mid Atlantic Search and Rescue, a volunteer group that aids in the search for missing persons.

Mid Atlantic Search and Rescue brought trained bloodhounds with them, according to John Pedersoli. The bloodhounds lost track of Pedersoli at the corner of Presley Road and Good Luck Road, leading investigators to believe that a passing motorist picked him up.

The only identification Pedersoli had with him at the time of his disappearance was an Alzheimer’s Association Safe Return bracelet, which carries the name of an Alzheimer’s patient and a toll free number that can be called if the person is unable to provide their address or phone number.

Police have returned several times in the past three weeks to canvas the neighborhood and talk to neighbors who may have seen something.

The case was upgraded from a ‘‘missing person” to an ‘‘abduction” on Sept. 1 after eight days without anyone having seen or heard from Pedersoli.

‘‘We’ve all pretty much come to the conclusion that he was picked up by someone [on Good Luck Road],” John Pedersoli said.Pedersoli has wandered away from his home three times in the past three years. Twice, passing motorists on Greenbelt Road spotted him. The other time, he was seen walking in his neighborhood by a resident.

Each time, Pedersoli walked the exact same route: through the neighborhood and onto Good Luck Road, then right on Cipriano Road toward Greenbelt Road.

John Pedersoli said that in the three weeks since his father’s disappearance the family has retraced this route several times searching for anything that might aid investigators.

The family has called every hospital in Prince George’s County, Montgomery County, Howard County and the District multiple times, combed each and every homeless shelter in the county and in Washington D.C., covered their neighborhood in fliers and posted signs at local shopping centers and Latino markets; all to no avail.

‘‘I’ve been hoping that someone would drive by and see one of those fliers and give us a call,” John Pedersoli said. ‘‘Somebody had to have seen something. It happened during rush hour on a Friday. Even a shred of information would really help us out at this point.”

The family has received many calls from concerned citizens who said they saw someone matching Pedersoli’s description in Beltsville, College Park and Greenbelt. None of the calls led anywhere.

‘‘Your hopes get up when somebody says they saw something, but then you get disappointed when nothing comes of it,” Miriam Pedersoli said.

Pedersoli was a professor of veterinary medicine at Auburn University from 1967 to 1987. He moved to Prince George’s County in 1988 to work for the Food & Drug Administration, which has offices in Beltsville. He retired in 2000.

Most of Pedersoli’s extended family resides in Belo Horizonte, a city with a population of 5.3 million in southeastern Brazil. According to Heleni Pedersoli, her husband’s last wish was to be cremated and for his ashes to be taken back to Belo Horizonte and buried next to his parents.

‘‘I want to find him so much so we can grant him that one last wish,” she said.

Marcello Pedersoli still clings to the hope that his father will return soon and that the trip back to Brazil will not yet be necessary.

E-mail Jonathan Stein at jstein@gazette.net.
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Family struggles to cope with father's cold-case disappearance
Police have no leads after man with Alzheimer's vanished in 2007
by Liz Skalski | Staff Writer

In August 2007, John Pedersoli was in the middle of coaching a soccer practice when his wife came to tell him his father, who suffered from Alzheimer's disease, had disappeared.

Pedersoli wasn't alarmed. He assumed he would find his father walking around his Lanham neighborhood, just like the previous times his father had gone missing.

Now it has been nearly two years since Waldir Pedersoli, who was 75 and had trouble walking and seeing at the time of his disappearance, vanished on Aug. 24, 2007. Investigators say they have no new information, and family members are losing hope that he will be found alive.

"The difficult part is that there are absolutely no leads at all, not a shred of evidence, not a clue from anyone," said John Pedersoli, 49, of Greenbelt.

The family plans to hold a vigil Monday, on the two-year anniversary of Waldir Pedersoli's disappearance, to remember him at the neighborhood crossroads where he disappeared, said Waldir Pedersoli's wife, Heleni Pedersoli.

Sept. 5 is the couple's 50th wedding anniversary.

Heleni Pedersoli, 68, said she plans to mark the day by attending church and praying for closure.

"For me, I am not a widow and I'm not married. Where am I?" she said.

Before Waldir Pedersoli was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2004, he was a veterinary medicine professor at Auburn University in Alabama from 1967 to 1987. He moved to Prince George's County in 1988 to work for the Food and Drug Administration in Beltsville and retired in the late 1990s.

The case is open and classified as a missing person's case, but no new information has surfaced since early 2008, said Officer Evan Baxter, a spokesman for the Prince George's County Police Department. Baxter said investigators declined to give details on information they have found.

"There's no reason to believe he's dead," Baxter said. "We're just waiting."

Waldir Pedersoli had wandered from his home in the 9400 block of Presley Place in Lanham before, members of his family said.

The day Waldir Pedersoli disappeared, he was being watched by his youngest son, Marcello Pedersoli, 43, who lived in the family's home at the time. Marcello Pedersoli, who now lives in Florida, told family members and police that he went downstairs to watch television at about 3 p.m. while his father napped upstairs. About an hour later, Marcello checked on his father and found him missing.

After searching the house and neighborhood, the family called police, who arrived at about 5:30 p.m. and scoured the area for hours. They returned the next day with members of Mid Atlantic Regional Search and Rescue, a New Jersey-based volunteer group that assists in missing person searches.

The rescue team's trained bloodhounds didn't track Waldir Pedersoli past the corner of Presley and Good Luck roads, leading investigators to believe that a motorist picked him up, John Pedersoli said. Waldir Pedersoli's family also suspects he may have boarded a local Metro bus.

His daughter, Miriam Pinheiro, 48, of Beltsville said she is surprised no one saw her father vanish during rush hour.

"As time passes you get less and less confident that he's going to be found," Pinheiro said. "We just don't really think he's alive because of the health problems. It's possible, I guess. It would be a miracle."

Pinheiro said her father wore an Alzheimer's bracelet with contact information. If someone had picked her father up, they likely would have seen the bracelet, she said.

Heleni Pedersoli said her husband still recognized his family, but he often became spatially disoriented, not knowing his way around his home and then wandering outside. Before his disappearance he had reverted to speaking his native Portuguese.

"We really expect the worst, but we would really like to have closure," she said.

John Pedersoli said he is trying to find normalcy.

"It's a true mystery," he said. "Now it's just a waiting game — waiting and hoping that something, someday is going to show up."

To read about Pedersoli's story, visit the America's Most Wanted Web site at www.amw.com/missing_persons/case.cfm?id=65154. Anyone with information is asked to call 800-27463-88 or submit a tip online.

E-mail Liz Skalski at eskalski@gazette.net.


http://www.gazette.net/stories/08182009/pr...031_32539.shtml
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remains had been found; workers clearing the underbrush found the remains which were identified as Waldir Pedersoli's In Prince George County
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