Family asks for help finding elderly Berwyn man with Alzheimer's who has been missing for days

CHICAGO (WLS) -- A desperate search is underway for an elderly man in the western suburbs.

Family members are on mission and are pleading for the community's help to find him.

For the past four days, family has been desperately searching for their 83-year-old father and grandfather, who they say has Alzheimer's disease.

He has been missing since Thursday and they fear the chances of finding him well, in the recent cold weather, are looking more grim as the days go on.

Jose Guadalupe Arevalo was last seen around 3 p.m. Thursday walking out of his Berwyn home near 19th Street and Scoville Avenue, wearing a green flannel shirt, blue jeans and a hat.

"I don't know where he's at. We just need everybody's help," said Arevalo's daughter, Esnelia Vargas.

Vargas said they're running out of ideas.

They've looked everywhere and called everyone, but have had no luck finding her father.

"He needs his medication. He's been without it for 72 hours, he hasn't eaten. He didn't have a coat on," she said. "His cognition has declined so much in the past year, he wanted to go home. And he said I have to go home and you would ask him, where is home? And he couldn't tell you."

Friends and family have been searching day and night for him.

"We've been passing flyers, driving block by block, visiting hospitals, shelters, talking with the homeless people, parks," said Arevalo's granddaughter, Gabriela Zaragoza.

Arevalo was a mechanic for nearly 25 years in this Berwyn community.

"Everybody knows him," Vargas said.

Don Lupe, as they call him, just celebrated his 83rd birthday.

Known as the life of the party, his family said he needs to come home.

"I'm just afraid he's somewhere laying on the ground," Vargas said. "We just want him back home safe."