‘We’re still searching every nook and cranny’: Crews continue to scour West Kelowna for missing senior

Search crews continue to frantically search for a missing West Kelowna man.

Lawrence Hamilton, 72, was last seen visiting his mother at West Kelowna’s Lakeview Lodge on Sunday.

“The search is ongoing. It’s slow. We’re still searching every nook and cranny, pulling every thread possible,” said Coralie Nairn of Vernon Search and Rescue. “We don’t have any clues as of yet. We have discovered where he is not.”

Nairn said Hamilton’s wife is worried because her husband has daily medication he needs to take.

“As you can imagine, she’s very distraught,” Nairn said.

Nairn said Hamilton wasn’t reported missing until two days after he was last seen because of the myth that police don’t take missing persons cases for 48 hours.

“Television, the movies, they’re always talking about a 24-hour or 48-hour wait period. I need the public to know there is no wait period. If somebody is missing, contact the RCMP as soon as possible,” Nairn said.

“His wife, from what we understand, actually did a search on her own, waiting for that clock to finish ticking, so to speak, to be able to put the call in.”

Search and rescue teams are asking people in West Kelowna to check their yards, as well as any dashcam or surveillance video from Sunday afternoon.

“We haven’t had anybody come forward in regards to checking camera footage and that’s really going to be our biggest point for investigation, is if we can get a direction of travel,” Nairn said.

Hamilton is about six feet tall and 177 pounds, or 182 cm tall and 80 kg, with dyed brown hair.

“He has a dark blue jacket on, beige shoes and a lime green shirt,” said Trevor Honigman of Vernon Search and Rescue.

“We don’t know what his cognitive ability was at the time. Temperatures were low, so he might have been cold. There is possibly some disorientation, primarily from exposure,” Nairn said.

“For all intents and purposes, he was quite healthy, but we’re looking at the possibility he got disoriented or lost.”

Hamilton is known as a man who loves to walk — not just for exercise, but a sheer love of it, Nairn said. He’s known to cover upwards of 70 km a day.

“He’s what I call the marathon walker. He could cover distance and go a great distance,” Nairn said.

That’s creating a challenge for search crews now as they have no leads on his direction after he left Lakeview Lodge.

“The search has been a number of days, which is taxing on the volunteers. We’ve been having a lot of cold, windy weather which drains a lot of energy from the guys and ladies working together,” Honigman said.

Searchers are out looking from early light to dark, Nairn said.

“We’ve covered almost every street from the last-known position, to Mount Boucherie, to the creek, to Peachland, to Powers, to Smith Creek, up through Shannon Lake area. We’ve covered a lot of ground,” she said.

“We’re going to go until we really don’t have anymore ground-pounders or bodies to carry out the task.”