Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca disappeared from his San Marino home Sunday afternoon, authorities said.
Baca, now 82, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, The Times has already reported.
The former sheriff was last seen leaving his home around 4:30 p.m., authorities said. He was wearing a long-sleeved red shirt and black pants, according to an internal department message. He is expected to be wearing a metal medical alert bracelet, the message said.
“His family, friends and colleagues as well as members of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department are concerned for his well-being,” a sheriff’s department spokesperson told The Times Sunday night. “We are in contact with his family and are offering our assistance and support during this difficult time.”
The department said it would provide additional resources to assist the San Marino Police Department in the search.
Raised by his grandparents in East Los Angeles, Baca dropped out of community college and was hired as a neighborhood cop at the sheriff’s department. He worked his way up the ranks, eventually earning a doctorate from USC. He worked for the department for decades before becoming the county’s top cop in 1998.
Toward the end of his tenure, the department was engulfed in a scandal that ultimately landed him and several others in federal prison. resigned in 2014.
The 2011 scandal that tarnished his reputation as a reformer involved his hiding an inmate who was an FBI informant and then threatening to arrest the agent leading the investigation. All 10 people from the department who were charged in the case have pleaded guilty or been convicted, including former Undersheriff Paul Tanaka, who was sentenced to five years in prison after a jury found he helped lead the scheme.
Several other deputies have been convicted of civil rights violations for beating inmates and prison visitors.
At trial, federal prosecutors focused on Baca’s efforts to obstruct the investigation, saying Tanaka spearheaded the obstruction and kept Baca informed of its progress. Baca’s lawyers argued that he never authorized any wrongdoing and that there was no hard evidence directly linking him to the obstruction operation.
At one point, Baca planned to plead guilty, but a federal judge said that was too lenient and the case went to trial — twice. After a mistrial, he was convicted and in 2017, he was sentenced to three years in federal prison.
He spent several years fighting his conviction in court. After losing his appeals, he began serving his sentence in 2020 at the Federal Correctional Institution in La Tuna.
He was released in January 2022, according to federal prison records.
