ORLANDO, Fla. — Thousands of Floridians go missing each year. An Orlando program has been instrumental in bringing some Central Florida residents home.
During a recent drill of that program, a young woman vanished without a trace in broad daylight outside Valencia College’s School of Public Safety, activating Orange County Sheriff’s Deputy Allan Darcey and his K9.
“All I want you to do is just rub your hands on it,” Darcey told a volunteer.
The law enforcement veteran demonstrated how he and his partner mobilize during a missing person’s call.
The recruit rubbed her scent on a paper towel, dropped it, then hid in a shed deep in the team’s training facility.
“Bloodhounds are our natural born trackers,” Darcey explained. “I would do a quick check of the area where I’m letting him smell everything that’s around there and hopefully picking up that person’s odor as well,” he added.
These are techniques the deputy and his partner Roscoe employed dozens of times during actual missing person’s calls since 2021. The 5-year-old bloodhound is one of four bloodhounds in the department as part of project “Bringing the Lost Home” to help reunite missing residents with loved ones.
Darcey said many of them are seniors.
“We get calls like that all the time where they have walked off, they wanted to go wander. You know, a lot of times people with dementia,” he said.
And it’s not just dementia or Alzheimer’s. The bloodhounds dispatch to missing children’s cases as well — tracking kids and adults with autism.
Most of it is paid for by the Senior Resource Alliance in Orlando.
According to the Department of Justice, 533,937 people were reported missing in 2025.
There were 2,547 open missing persons cases in Florida in 2026.
“We know that patients that are living with dementia tend to be lost and disoriented in the community,” Karla Radka, President and CEO of Senior Resource Alliance explained. “And that can create such a great risk on their safety.”
The program costs $15,000 to purchase and train each dog and handler. Most of that comes from state and federal grants. The nonprofit provided eleven bloodhounds to its partner agencies, including Brevard and Osceola County’s Sheriff’s Departments.
Radka said “Scent Kits” are a key component of the K9 program.
Families can store a loved one’s unique odor in them up to 10 years. SRA distributes the free kits to senior centers, nursing homes and other Central Florida facilities.
“We find that caregivers have that sense of safety when they have a Scent Kit in their home to be able to store the scent of their loved one and have that kit ready in the event that their person with dementia is lost in the community,” Radka stressed.
For Darcey, the kits are another important tool when searching for someone.
“It could be somebody’s father, their brother, their sister, their child. You want to have whatever resources are available to be able to find your loved one,” he said.
“Bringing the Lost Home” has recorded 131 successful finds. The Senior Resource Alliance plans to donate ten more bloodhounds to area law enforcement after receiving $400,000 in grants from the Department of Justice and state. SRA also plans to purchase more Scent Kits.
If you’d like more information about how to get a free kit, call the Elder Help-Line at 1-407-514-1800.