Kind Amazon delivery driver helps elderly woman with dementia find her way back home

It can be terrible to think about losing a close relative. Alzheimer's care and living with loved ones with the disorder entails being ready for unexpected events, such as the loved one wandering off. One can only hope that if a family member became lost and wandered off, a nice stranger would be there to offer assistance. Gigi was 92 years old when she wandered away one-day last year from her house. She and her family were fortunate to have an Amazon driver present to help her get back home safely. Since Gigi's dementia is in an advanced stage, she struggles with memory and critical thinking. She had wandered about her Franklin Square, New Jersey neighborhood after leaving her house unannounced.

The Amazon driver, Wilmar, noticed Gigi while she was at Franklin Square, and immediately stepped in to help. “I was delivering and I saw this older lady was walking by. She waved at me, which isn't an odd occurrence, people wave at you all the time as an Amazon driver. But she was waving at me like something happened,” Wilmar recalls to Ring. “I noticed how she had this wristband on. And it had her name and her information, as well as who to contact.”

Wilmar was able to contact her granddaughter Karen because of a medical alert bracelet that Gigi was sporting. She gave him their address and he graciously took Gigi home while she was away picking up her mother from a doctor's appointment.

Karen observed Wilmar delicately assist her grandma back inside the house through her Ring doorbell. He assisted Gigi in getting out of the van and even held her hand as they neared the door. “I was able to flip on my Ring camera and watch them come into the driveway,” says Karen. “It gave us that extra layer of comfort and relief that we could see everything. That it wasn't just a phone call, it wasn't just somebody saying, 'Oh, she's in,' it was us actually visually seeing that she was safe, she was where she needed to be.”

Karen is appreciative of Wilmar for selflessly acting to help Gigi out, a trait rare in today's fast-paced world. “I felt that Wilmar went above and beyond. We have that type of a great close-knit community here, that if there's something that a driver's going to spot, that's out of line, he's going to say, 'I'm going to make sure that my customers are taken care of because this doesn't look right,'” she says. “It made me feel safe that she was taken care of by somebody who's been to my home, somebody that had a connection to the house and the family.”

Wilmar considers himself a member of the community in which he conducts deliveries and believes he has a role in keeping the neighborhood safe. “I think it's very important that the community looks out for one another. If something happens, see something, say something. You just wanna make sure that your neighbors are safe, and everybody's happy. It benefits all as long as we're all contributing.”