FL Woman Survived 6 Days Locked In Neighbor’s Garage Without Food

COLLIER COUNTY, FL — An 80-year-old woman with dementia who was missing for six days was found Sunday in a neighbor’s garage, according to a Collier County Sheriff’s Office news release.

Margaret Gallaway was reported missing Oct. 16 in the Crown Pointe community in East Naples.

Deputies contacted every resident in the community, knocking on doors and working through the weekend, Commander Chris Goldhorn said during a news conference. (Watch the news conference below.)

They also asked residents to check their security cameras.

One resident, who was out of town, was aware of the search for Gallaway and reviewed the footage from their motion-activated surveillance cameras while away.

When investigators spoke with the resident on Oct. 20, they asked to inspect their surveillance system and learned there was an additional camera they hadn’t mentioned because it “wasn’t believed to have a helpful view,” Goldhorn said.

This camera doesn't record video, but takes still shots every six minutes.

Deputies saw “a brief glimpse of a person entering a nearby open garage” around 3:30 p.m. on the day Gallaway went missing, the sheriff’s office said.

Finding the image was like "a needle in a haystack," Goldhorn said. "Blink and you'll miss it."

The resident’s daughter, who lives in Wisconsin, gave deputies the code to the garage and permission to search it.

There, they found the missing woman, who didn’t have access to food for six days, though there was an empty Vitamin Water bottle in the garage, which they believe she drank.

After being rescued, Gallaway, who is non-verbal, “spoke her first words spoken in months,” Goldhorn said.

“We would like to express our sincere thanks to everyone who has helped find our mother,” her daughter, Maureen Taylor, said during the news conference. “It was obvious that she wasn’t just seen as a missing person, but as a mother, as a wife, as a friend to so many.”

Doctors who assessed Gallaway after the rescue said that “if (we) didn’t find her (Sunday,) she would not have survived,” Taylor added.

“It came down to tenacious police work,” Col. Jim Bloom said.

Watch the news conference about Gallaway's rescue: