BANGOR, Maine — Two Bangor bus drivers hope a passenger and good friend pulls through after their concern led to police finding the man on the floor of his apartment where he’d apparently been for several days.
Bobby Vicnaire and Tiffany Curtis are bus drivers for Community Connector, Bangor’s bus service. One of their passengers is an 84-year-old Brewer resident who rides the bus every day to go shopping, often at Wal-Mart. If he misses a day, he’s almost always there the next, according to the drivers.
He usually brings his bus driver a 6-inch sub and soda for the lunch break.
“This bus is his social life, he knows everybody and everybody knows him,” Curtis said.
“He doesn’t have anybody, so we keep an eye out for him,” Vicnaire said, adding that the passenger has a long history of serious medical issues.
This week, Curtis and Vicnaire became very worried about him.
“The last time we saw him was last Wednesday,” Curtis said Friday, the day she and Vicnaire started calling hospitals and nursing homes, and knocking on the door of his North Main Street apartment in hopes of finding out he was OK.
The checks at the hospitals and nursing homes turned up nothing, and no one answered the door at his apartment. Neighbors couldn’t remember seeing him in more than a week.
Curtis called Brewer police, who entered the apartment for a welfare check Friday afternoon. Police and EMTs found him on the floor. He could have been there for as many as nine days, according to Vicnaire.
The Bangor Daily News isn’t naming the passenger, because it wasn’t immediately clear whether he has family members that need to be notified of his condition. Brewer police did not respond to a request for more information about the welfare check by Friday evening.
Curtis and Vicnaire sat in the emergency room waiting area at Eastern Maine Medical Center through Friday afternoon and into the evening waiting for news of their friend.
A hospital spokesman said there was no information available on the man’s condition Friday evening.
Follow Nick McCrea on Twitter at @nmccrea213.