Officials honor 2 for aid to man

• By PATRICK COURREGES
• Advocate Acadiana bureau
• Published: May 3, 2008 - Page: 1BA - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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LAFAYETTE — Lafayette City Parish President Joey Durel and a pair of local legislators held a small ceremony Friday for two convenience store employees credited with helping save a life.

Durel, state Rep. Rickey Hardy, D-Lafayette, and state Sen. Don Cravins Jr., D-Opelousas, gave certificates of recognition to William Glover and Debra Shah, employees of the Kwik Stop, 200 Louisiana Ave.

The Louisiana Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association arranged for the ceremony after Glover and Shah recently helped an Alzheimer’s patient who showed up in their parking lot unaware of who or where he was.

Ruth Fontenot, with the Alzheimer’s Association, said that wandering off is a common problem for Alzheimer’s patients and that is what happened to the man Glover and Shah helped March 27.

“The patient had wandered off from a doctor’s appointment,” she said.

Fontenot said the man traveled a long way to end up in the parking lot of the Kwik Stop, next to a the busy intersection of Evangeline Thruway and Louisiana Avenue.

Glover said he saw the man standing in the parking lot for about 20 or 30 minutes looking confused.

Glover said that when he approached, the man did not know his own name or where he was.

Glover brought him inside the store to call police for help and Shah, whose husband owns the store, spotted a wristband the man was wearing.

That wristband, provided as part of the Alzheimer’s Association Safe Return program, gave a helpline number that Shah called to help reunite the man with his family.

“Not every wandering incident has this happy ending,” Cravins said.

Hardy said he appreciated Glover and Shah having acted to take care of someone in need and Durel said the two are “great role models for the Lafayette people.”

“What you did was truly heroic,,” Bob Stephens, executive director for the Louisiana Alzheimer’s Association group, said to Glover and Shah. “It ended well because you acted responsibly.”