A 29-year-old woman named Michelle walked away from a group home in Falcon, Colorado, Friday evening and has not returned, according to the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office. Deputies say she requires regular medication and are asking anyone with information about her whereabouts to come forward.
The El Paso County Sheriff’s Office reported that Michelle left on foot earlier that evening and did not return to her group home, which is located near Mountain Harvard and Culebra Peak Drive in Falcon. The office described her as 5 feet 6 inches tall, weighing about 180 pounds, with brown hair and blue eyes. Anyone with information or sightings is asked to call 719-390-5555.
An Unincorporated Community With No Municipal Police
Falcon sits roughly 14 miles northeast of Colorado Springs along U.S. Route 24 and is home to more than 23,000 residents, according to Wikipedia. Because the community is unincorporated, it has no municipal police department of its own, leaving public safety entirely to El Paso County commissioners and sheriff’s deputies. The Sheriff’s Office patrols more than 2,130 square miles and serves a population exceeding 740,000 residents with over 500 sworn deputies, per its own accounting.
The county has been investing in coverage for the fast-growing area. On August 27, Sheriff Joseph Roybal broke ground on a new substation in Falcon, a project expected to be completed this fall to enhance public safety coverage in eastern El Paso County. That expansion comes as the same stretch of Falcon has seen other public safety concerns recently — earlier this month, a vehicle struck a pedestrian and crashed into a Walmart Supercenter along Meridian Market View, a reminder of the heavy vehicular traffic running through the community’s commercial corridors.
How Colorado Handles At-Risk Adult Searches
State guidelines allow police and sheriff’s departments to request Missing At-Risk Adult Alerts through the Colorado Bureau of Investigation for adults 18 or older with intellectual, developmental, or physical disabilities, or medical needs that impair self-preservation. It remains unclear whether a formal state-level alert has been issued in Michelle’s case, or what specific risks she faces without access to her medication…