Silver Alert Now Issued For Tom Doolan, Missing For A Month

NEW LONDON, CT — Police have issued a Silver Alert for Tom Doolan, a missing 59-year-old who was last seen at a sober-living house in New London nearly a month ago.

Patch first wrote about Doolan's disappearance and spoke to his former wife and his daughter, Paige Knobel, who said her father, despite his substance abuse issues, would never have missed his grandson's birthday or not contacted them for Christmas.

The family has taken to social media, contacted everyone who knows him, and called hospitals, rehab centers and even jails across the state. Knobel had gone to police previously. When contacted by Patch to let her know a Silver Alert had been issued, she said she'd called police again Sunday, adding that she "wouldn’t put it out there for the world to see to humiliate him, and if he was able to see this he would have turned up by now."

Police were apparently convinced.

Knobel's mother, Suzanne Cordova, last saw Doolan on Thanksgiving. In an interview with Patch, Knobel said she last saw him Dec. 1. He had been "living in the Berkeley Street sober house but thought he was getting kicked out, and then he just vanished and left his things." She said she's not been permitted to have his belongings "to maybe get answers." When she last spoke with him, he appeared "manic, frantic and just outright delusional and making absolutely no sense."

Knobel, whose husband is in the military and just recently returned home from a deployment, said that her father last used his state and Social Security electronic benefits cards around Dec. 4 and has not been heard from or seen since.

Doolan has substance abuse problems and has a criminal record with a conviction for breach of peace and assault. But Cordova says that "regardless of his past, this is very out of character for Tom. He's never went this long not contacting his daughter. Ever. We need help. Please, I'm begging, for my daughter's heart is breaking."

Cordova told Patch that, "As someone who's watched Tom's ups and downs for many years, decades, this just isn't him. So, yes, we're suspicious for sure."

"All his belongings are still there; it seems he just simply disappeared, because he told one guy he was going to see a friend in a trailer/camper down the road. And never came back. We've searched for said camper trailer and found nothing," Cordova said.

"Tom is a fantastic storyteller, as most addicts, are but he was clean. He has never gone more than two or three days without contact with Paige. Or me sometimes. We've talked to his visiting nurse and his doctors — there's been no contact. Whenever Tom has been admitted to anywhere, historically, he always has nurses or doctors call Paige to tell her where he is. She's a mess. Her dad is everything to her. And I can't stress enough that this isn't Tom. Not even in the worst of his addiction in the past he would never not contact her. We need help."

Anyone with information about Tom Doolan is asked to call the New London Police Department at 860-447-5269.