By John Howell
A search effort coordinated between Panola and Tate County Wednesday night led authorities to a missing woman who had apparently suffered a stroke.

It was the sixth search for a missing person that Panola County Search and Rescue has been involved with in the last two weeks, Panola Emergency Management Agency (EMA) Director Daniel Cole said.

Panola Sheriff’s Department Investigator Lieutenant Albert Perkins said that the 62-year-old woman left her business north of Como about 10 a.m. Wednesday. Relatives became concerned when she had not returned by 5 p.m. and notified authorities between 7 and 8 p.m.
Perkins said that on-duty and extra deputies immediately gathered at the site of the business to plan a search as did Cole and other EMA personnel and volunteers.

As search personnel were mustering EMA Geographic Information Systems (GIS) specialist Chris Downs used his vehicle’s computer to track the missing person’s cell phone. The phone was apparently turned off, but Downs was able to determine that the phone had last “pinged” from a cell tower in Tate County between 2 and 3 p.m. He told other searchers that the phone had been within a two-to-three mile radius of the tower at the time.

Perkins said that the location was familiar to the missing person’s son, himself a Tate County Deputy Sheriff. The son told officials where he suspected she might have traveled in Tate County near the cell tower’s location, and fellow Tate deputies began searching there.
As Perkins was giving Panola deputies instructions to began searching roads and under bridges in Panola County between Highway 310 and the county line, a call came to Cole, notifying him that a Tate County official had found the woman in the area that had been identified.

She was about 100 feet from her vehicle where she had apparently been stricken and transported to the hospital by ambulance, Perkins said.

Cole said that searches during the last two weeks have taken officials to the Union, Curtis, Pleasant Grove and Como to search for missing persons. Another search for evidence was cancelled after the requesting agency changed its mind, the EMA director said.

The most recent search prior to Wednesday night was begun after an Arkansas woman contacted the sheriff’s department about her husband whom she had not heard from in two days after he had left to come to Panola County to hunt turkeys, Cole said. She had been unable to reach him by phone.

Authorities were able to contact the hunter by activating the On-Star system in his truck, Cole said. The alarm system sounded, waking the man in his truck where he had been sleeping.
Another search in the Enid Shores area had a more tragic ending when authorities conducted an exhaustive, two-day search that located the body of a missing person missing.