Seattle police are searching for Bobbie Berkowitz, a 76-year-old woman with advanced dementia who was last seen early Tuesday walking south on Terry Avenue from 900 University Street, possibly heading toward 1900 Alaskan Way on the downtown waterfront. She is described as 5 feet 5 inches tall, thin, with white hair, and was wearing a green and white checkered shirt, blue jeans, and sneakers when she disappeared.
The Seattle Police Department shared the appeal on social media just after 8 p.m. Pacific time Monday, asking anyone who spots her to call 911 immediately. According to the Seattle Police Department, the route she may have taken would carry her nearly a mile downhill from First Hill through downtown Seattle toward Elliott Bay. The address where she was last seen, 900 University Street, is the site of Horizon House, a 90-bed nonprofit continuing care community that offers independent living, assisted living, and memory care, according to LeadingAge WA.
A Trailblazer in Seattle Public Health
Berkowitz is not just any missing senior in a city that has seen a string of dementia-related disappearances this summer. She is a nationally recognized figure in public health and nursing, having served as Deputy Secretary of the Washington State Department of Health from 1993 to 1997, per the Washington State Nurses Association. Earlier in her career she led nursing services for the Seattle-King County Department of Public Health from 1986 to 1993 and was later elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2001.
She went on to serve as Dean of Columbia University School of Nursing from 2010 to 2018 before returning to Seattle, and was named a Living Legend by the American Academy of Nursing in 2020, the organization’s highest honor, according to Columbia’s nursing school. She had also served as President of the American Academy of Nursing from 2014 to 2016. In January 2019, Swedish Health Services named her to its Board of Trustees in Seattle, a role tied to the hospital system’s flagship campus on First Hill, not far from where she went missing this week.
The Reported Route Toward the Waterfront
The address police cited as her possible destination, 1900 Alaskan Way, corresponds to Waterfront Landings, a residential condo complex along Elliott Bay near the Seattle Aquarium, according to the Seattle Condo Group. That would mean a descent of roughly a mile down steep downtown terrain from Horizon House on First Hill, a route that would take her through some of Seattle’s busiest streets…