Missing Elderly Man Found in Amagansett

Medio Figliolia, an 87-year-old Mastic man who suffers from dementia and went missing last week, was found safe in Amagansett on Monday afternoon.

East Hampton Town Police Chief Ed Ecker confirmed that the man, for whom Suffolk County police had issued a Silver Alert, was found near the Terry King ball field on Town Lane around 1:30 p.m.

"Suffolk County was out here looking for him after there was a sighting of him," Ecker said. 

Michelle Grant, a Springs resident, told East Hampton Patch that on Sunday afternoon she was stopped at a stop sign at Will Curl Highway and Three Mile Harbor Road, when an elderly man pulled over to ask her for directions. "He asked me where a road was that I didn't recognize, so I asked him, 'Is that in Springs?' He said, 'Actually I'm trying to get to Brooklyn,'" she said.

She gave him directions back to Route 27 and they parted. When she got back home, she told her husband, Gordon Grant, the strange story.

Later that night, her husband, a photographer who works for various news organizations, received the Silver Alert, which was issued Sunday evening. He showed her the man's photo that accompanied it, and Michelle Grant said they were one in the same.

"I felt horrible," she said, adding that in retrospect she wishes she had done more to inquire into his circumstances. "We called the number and we spoke to the seventh squad detectives."

Michelle Grant posted the incident on Facebook in hopes that someone else in the area would spot the missing man. Monday morning she got a text from a friend who thought she had seen him walking near the Senior Citizens Center on Springs Fireplace Road. "He walked across the street without looking," she said. The woman also reported the sighting to detectives.

The East Hampton Village Ambulance Association transported Figliolia to Southampton Hospital, Ecker said. He said he believed it was for precautionary reasons.

Figliolia was last seen on Sept. 18 standing in his driveway at on Southaven Avenue in Mastic.