Facebook’s saving grace

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Vernon and Elaine Schweisthal

Facebook isn’t always about sharing mundane photos or posts. There are times when the information shared is so important that it can save lives, just as it did in Bill Byerley’s case, whose grandparents went missing earlier this summer, only to be found two days later — hungry, disoriented and dehydrated — thanks largely to Facebook and the kindness of strangers.

Byerley’s grandparents Vern and Elaine Schweisthal are 89 and 85 years old respectively, both of whom have been dealing with early symptoms of Alzheimer’s and dementia. Once, they were to go for a lunch date with a friend about 20 minutes away from their home in Elmhurst, Illinois, but never made it. That evening, when Byerley’s mother called to check in, the couple didn’t answer. When Byerley drove over to their house, he found his grandparents’ car missing, and the woman they were supposed to visit said they never showed up. Byerley couldn’t reach them by cellphone, and when there was still no sign of them till the next morning he knew something was seriously wrong.
Byerley quickly assembled a team of around 200 local volunteers to help canvass the area but the group turned up nothing. That’s when Byerley, a 30-year-old web developer by trade, started a Facebook page to organise the effort to find his grandparents. The ‘Help Find Vernon and Elaine Schweisthal’ page helped neighbours and friends share posts describing Vernon and Elaine with their friends, who then shared with their own friends. Analytics showing that posts on the page had been viewed as many as 40,000 times.
Nearly two full days after Vern and Elaine had left their house, a tip from a woman who ran into an elderly couple at a truck stop helped narrow Byerley’s search to the area around Princeton, Illinois. This helped another woman, who lives near Princeton, to drive around looking for any sign of Vern, Elaine or their car.
The woman finally located them on a remote gravel farm road. They’d run out of petrol and hadn’t eaten or drunk anything for two days. Elaine thought they were on vacation, and Vern thought they’d only been gone a day. They had clocked a total of 950 miles in what was originally supposed to be a 20-minute trip!
Bill Byerley and his entire family were a relieved lot. He even wrote an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg on the Facebook search page, quoting, “Your creation is credited for the safe return of our family members.”