‘Get her home’: Missing Calgary senior’s family pleads for her safe return

People across Alberta and parts of Saskatchewan are on the lookout for a missing Calgary woman after desperate pleas from her family to bring her home safely.

Eighty-two-year-old Diane Cooper went missing from her home with her Dalmatian, Halo, in the northwest Calgary community of Edgemont on April 6.

Her granddaughter Zoe said she first learned her grandmother, who has a mild form of dementia, went missing after the air tag on her car showed her location as being in the central Alberta town of Stettler.

“We’re not 100 per cent sure what she was doing or how she ended up driving to the city,” Zoe told CTV News in an interview Tuesday.

A security camera at a gas station in Stettler captured Cooper filling up her gas tank, Zoe said. Cooper is believed to have asked for directions back to Calgary before continuing driving.

“I chased her air tag location from Stettler to Castor and then into Hanna, but I just couldn’t catch up with her," Zoe said. “It was like she was two hours ahead of me no matter what I did.”

Zoe said she called the RCMP in for help after her grandmother’s location was pinged in the eastern Alberta community of Veteran.

RCMP say Cooper was later spotted in the western Saskatchewan hamlet of Hoosier on April 6.

Zoe said her grandmother walks Halo every day in Calgary’s River Park, which she drives to. She thinks her grandmother ended up in Stettler after getting disoriented while on an errand or driving to a walk.

“The dementia gets worse the more tired she gets,” Zoe said. “I’m thinking that she just hasn’t slept well, so she hasn’t found her way home.”

She added her grandmother is “not very trusting of strangers, so the foul play theories don’t even make that much sense.”

“We’ll get her home. I feel very hopeful.”

Cooper says many people have been submitting possible tips on Facebook, and she appreciates that people across central Alberta and Saskatchewan have been keeping an eye out for her grandmother.

Diane Cooper was driving a grey Toyota C-HR XLE, with Alberta licence plate LVA 978.

Anyone with information about Cooper’s whereabouts are asked to contact RCMP.

— with files from CTV’s Shaun Frenette