Last night a Silver Alert was issued for Sylvester Stang, 90, of Hamburg. He had gone missing after church and had yet to be found. The Silver Alert that was issued stated that Stang was driving a white 2007 Mercury Marquis with the license plate BGW-3387 and was last seen in Orchard Park around 11am on Sunday.

This is where our part of the story starts. Clay and I were leaving the Rand Building in Lafayette Square with our engineer to pick up Dale at his house. It was another Mussen Monday and we decided to go pick up Dale at his house as a treat for him. We had been delayed leaving the building so we were hustling. We turned the corner on Lafayette Square and were headed west when Clay noticed a car on the other side of the square headed the wrong direction (also west) on the one way street. The car crossed Main and we just made a comment about how weird it was but that we had seen weirder things in Lafayette Square at this time of morning. A metro train went by and we proceeded towards Niagara Square where the car was waiting at the red light. The driver then put his left turn signal on and Clay commented again about how the car was about to go the wrong way. That's when I leaned over and looked out the front windshield (I was sitting in the back seat) and noticed the license plate. I said, "I think that's the car that's on the Silver Alert!" I had seen the alerts on the message boards on the 190 coming into work and had thought to myself, "I wonder what happens when people actually see the plate and car that the alert is for," never thinking I would actually see the car. That thought was enough for me to remember the first three letters of the plate and know that this was probably the car. Clay then remembered that this was the color and make form the alert. Once we realized the possibility was high of this being the missing man we decided to follow him and call 911. As we followed him onto 4th Street we were parallel to the 190 and the message board had the alert up and had all the information we needed to confirm that this was the license plate... 100%.

Clay Moden
Clay Moden
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We confirmed with 911 the direction he was headed and continued in the same direction.

We came up on the intersection of Niagara and Connecticut and saw a Buffalo police vehicle with its blue lights on and assumed that it was waiting for the vehicle to pass. However, it stayed in its spot once the car went by and didn't look like it was moving. It turns out it was monitoring the intersection because the traffic lights were down. We decided to stop and Clay hopped out and ran over to the police woman to inform her that the Silver Alert individual had just passed. She took off and was able to successfully stop and pull over the car safely. When we passed them, from what we could see, he was in good physical condition.

It was wonderful when we finally saw that he had officially been reunited with his family.

It was truly a crazy experience, but we were just so glad that we happened to be in the right place at the right time. It was truly a team effort from Clay spotting the vehicle, me recognizing the plate, to Larry our engineer knowing ALL the streets in downtown! Even Keith Kelly back in the studio was trying to help us confirm the alert with the information we had. Even though we were late picking up Dale, we obviously wouldn't change anything that happened.

So that's how this week's Mussen Monday started out. It was definitely a first in our radio careers. A few of his family member have reached out to us. We're just happy that he is home safe.

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