(RepublicanView.org) – Lee Baca, a native-born ex- L.A. County Sheriff and former prison inmate who has Alzheimer’s, was found unharmed early Monday morning, July 15, about 8 1/2 hours after he went missing in San Marino.
A family member said that Baca, 82, went missing from his home after 4:30 p.m.
Around 1 a.m., San Marino Police Chief John Incontro told the media that Baca was found sitting in a diner in El Monte and could be identified by a bracelet he wears.
Incontro said that Baca wasn’t hurt and that he seemed to be okay emotionally.
The San Marino Police Department led the search for Baca, with help from other police departments in the area and the sheriff’s missing-persons officers.
Baca had been last seen walking north on Virginia Road toward Huntington Drive.
The police in Arcadia and Claremont sent K-9 units, and the police in Pasadena sent air backup.
From 1998 to 2014, Baca was the sheriff of Los Angeles County.
In 2016, before he was found guilty of blocking an FBI investigation into abuse in county jails, his lawyers said that he had Alzheimer’s disease. Then in 2017, the 82-year-old former L.A. sheriff was found guilty of obstruction of justice.
He spent about two years of his three-year term in federal prison.
He quit his job as sheriff during the 2014 corruption scandal. He was later found guilty of lying to the FBI and trying to stop the agency from investigating corruption in the country’s biggest jail system.
In 2011, agents were looking into claims that jail guards bribed and beat inmates in secret. That’s when Baca and his top lieutenants found out that an inmate was working for the FBI as an informant.
Baca and the top brass planned to hide the spy in the jail system by booking the inmate under fake names and transporting him to different places. They also tried to scare off an FBI agent by saying they would arrest her.
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