A 71-YEAR-OLD Shanghainese man, believed to be suffering from dementia, has been found by good Samaritans after being lost here for six days.
Zhou Decheng had flown here from Shanghai, China, to visit daughter Zhou Zhifen, a 46-year-old housewife.
He became uncontactable in the Clementi area at about 7am on Feb 27, Chinese newspaper Shin Min Daily News reported yesterday.
Ms Zhou tried several ways to find her father: contacting the newspapers, calling the police and using social media platforms such as microblogging site Sina Weibo.
After she posted on social media asking for help to find her dad, she received more than a hundred phone calls offering suggestions and help.
She said she was heartened by the help she received, with some driving her to look for her father and others providing bread and water to the groups tasked with finding Mr Zhou.
She told Shin Min that she received a call at about 11am on Thursday saying that her father had been found at a bus stop at Penjuru Road.
“I asked to speak to him and recognised his voice once I heard it so I rushed down. I was so moved to see him that I almost cried,” she said.
Her dad told her that he had been looked after by kind strangers in the six days that he had been lost.
Ms Zhou estimates that her father ate at least one meal a day.
She said people treated him to meals when he wandered into hawker centres and said he was hungry.
He slept on a bench at a stadium and would walk around if he felt cold.
Ms Zhou said her father had lost 7kg in the ordeal and now has trouble falling asleep.
Speaking with tears in his eyes, he told Shin Min on Saturday: “I saw my daughter and only then did I realise that I’d been outside for more than five days.”
myp@sph.com.sg
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