Deputies in Covington help reunite missing Oregon woman with family

King County deputies say an Oregon woman diagnosed with early-onset dementia, who had been reportedly missing since Thanksgiving, was found last month more than 400 miles away in Covington.

Tracy Lake’s husband and children spent weeks looking for her, and even checked the local morgue, without any luck.

“Can’t sleep, can’t eat,” said Tracy’s husband Don Lake in an interview with KIRO 7.

The family said they started to lose hope she’d return home alive.

"When you're not hearing from her; you don't know where she is, what's happening to her, if she's safe or not,” said Tracy’s daughter Victoria Lake.

Then, two months after vanishing from the family’s Grants Pass, Oregon home, Lake said he got a call from the King County Sheriff’s Office to say deputies in Covington had found Tracy. A local business owner had reported Tracy was lying on the ground along Wax Road.

Deputies Jessy Bailey and Jordan Hess responded and said Tracy was initially not cooperative, wouldn’t even provide her name, and appeared to be in bad shape physically and mentally.

“We were trying to talk gently to her and tried to coax out a little more information from her because it was very clear, she didn't want to talk to us,” said Hess.

Deputy Bailey said Tracy had not committed a crime, but they kept digging to learn more about the woman.

“I think at first she gave me the wrong birth date,” said Bailey. “But our dispatch is really good. They figured it out, kind of dialed it in, and then we realized who we had.”

Bailey said Don Lake was initially in disbelief on the phone that deputies had found his wife so far from home.

“He goes, ‘No way you’re talking to my wife, can you describe her?’” said Bailey. “So I started going through what she was wearing and that was the exact clothes she left back in November in.”

Deputies said Tracy, who had a very high fever, was taken to a hospital in Covington to be treated for the flu and possible pneumonia.

"[The deputies] did go the extra mile and thought things weren't just quite right there,” said Don Lake, who drove from Oregon to get his wife from the hospital and bring her home.

“It’s the emotional paycheck,” said deputy Bailey. “It’s the starfish story for me, it’s definitely worth doing the job.”

Don Lake said he believes his wife hitchhiked to Washington but said she has not filled in the blanks on what exactly she did during those two months away from home. Lake said about two weeks ago, Tracy left home unannounced again, and may now be in the Redding, California area.

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