Woman survives night lost in woods 85-year-old found Friday morning

An elderly woman from Orono spent a stormy night lost in the woods near Kelley Road before a search dog and handler from Stonington found her early Friday morning.

Searchers from the Orono Police Department, the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Department, the Maine Warden Service and Maine Search and Rescue Dogs joined forces to find Schlotta Ann Meyer, 85, who had wandered away earlier that afternoon from Dirigo Pines Retirement Community in Orono. Meyer was located about 7:30 a.m., chilled and complaining of minor pain, but otherwise apparently unhurt.

According to Deborah Palman of the Maine Warden Service, residents of the retirement community realized early in the evening that Meyer was missing. Staff searched the main building, called the “Inn,” where Meyer lives in an apartment, and then expanded the search to other buildings in the wooded development.

“She hadn’t made arrangements to have her cat fed. Her cell phone and her purse were still in her room,” Palman said.

Orono police were called when the elderly woman could not be located. Meyer had last been seen at the Inn at 4:30 p.m., but a male resident told police he had seen her shortly after noon walking on Kelley Road, a busy thoroughfare that borders the property.

As thunderstorms broke over the area and a drenching rain fell, canine search dogs and their handlers arrived on the scene from the warden service and the sheriff’s office. But the rain and the earlier search activity had obliterated and contaminated much of the woman’s scent, Palman said, and the ground-sniffing dogs were unable to follow her.

That’s when “air-scent” dogs and their handlers from Maine Search and Rescue Dogs were called, Palman said. Air-scent dogs don’t track a specific person’s trail along the ground but instead are trained to search an area for any human scent, she explained.

Six air-scent teams arrived late in the night and began searching the area. Finally, at about 7:30 Friday morning, Irene Morey of Stonington and her German Shepherd, Eiko, found Meyer about a quarter-mile into the woods on the south side of Kelley Road, sitting on a stump.

Meyer told rescuers that she had become disoriented, thinking she was at her brother’s home in Kansas.

“When she realized she was wrong, she sat down on a stump and waited,” Palman said. “She was out there all night in bugs and the storm and the dark.” Palman said Meyer did not appear to have suffered any serious injuries during her ordeal.

Meyer was transported by ambulance to St. Joseph Hospital in Bangor. Information about her condition was not available Friday evening.