Lost and found

One of the more frightening moments of my childhood had to be the day our family went, along with hundreds of others, to get sugar cubes laden with a polio vaccine. It wasn't the vaccine that was scary. It was getting lost in the crowd.

I was about 5 years old and supposed to follow my brother Hugh, then about 11 years old. He was very tall. I held onto a corner of his thick brown corduroy jacket as we threaded through what seemed like a million people in Wellington Elementary School's gym. Someone jostled us and the coat slipped out of my fingers. Everyone was so tall ... I looked for brown corduroy, saw it, and held on, this time more tightly, squeezed through the people and grabbed a hand, looking up. But it wasn't my brother. At just about the same time, Hugh appeared by my side and all was well again.

Sometimes getting lost is like that. But sometimes it's an experience like the one Lori Jean Rose had between Saturday, after she wandered away from the residential care facility where she lives in Cape Girardeau, and Monday, when she was discovered in Chicago. Rose, 47, uses a walker and is developmentally disabled — her legal guardian Pam Dirnberger described her as having the mental capacity of a 7-year-old. Once in Chicago, Rose hailed a police officer and asked for help. She was returned on a flight to St. Louis; Dirnberger picked her up at the airport.

A doctor will examine Rose, who said she bumped her knee and hurt her lip at some point between leaving home on Saturday morning and returning to Cape Girardeau Monday night. Other than that, she seems to be OK, according to Dirnberger. No one yet knows how she got the bus ticket to Chicago.

Perhaps because I've been assigned to write about experiences people have had with guardian angels for All Saints Day, I wondered if Rose had one (or more) with her, guiding her back to safety.

What do you think?

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