Missing Illinois Man Turns up in Phoenix Grocery Store

A snowbird has joined us in a Phoenix a little early this year; we're just not sure how the heck he got here.Douglas Rudsinski, 66, from Matteson, Illinois, disappeared from a vacation home in Connecticut on Friday morning, and was inexplicably found at the Safeway on East Greenway Road in...

By James King

August 18, 2009

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A snowbird has joined us in a Phoenix a little early this year; we're just not sure how the heck he got here.

Douglas Rudsinski, 66, from Matteson, Illinois, disappeared from a vacation home in Connecticut on Friday morning, and was inexplicably found at the Safeway on East Greenway Road in Phoenix yesterdayt morning.

Police say that Rudsinski has a medical condition, which made it difficult for him to communicate verbally. However, once they got his name, police say, they found him on a national crime-information database, where he was listed as a missing and endangered person.

Rudsinski was taken by police to a Valley hospital, where he was found to be all right.

Connecticut police are now trying to figure out how to get the man back to his summer home in the Constitution State.

Umm... figuring out how to get him home should be the easy part; why not try to figure out how an elderly man with a medical condition and poor verbal communication skills managed to travel 2,500 miles from Connecticut, only wind up in a grocery store in Phoenix.

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