Welcome to news4 this week. Hi, everyone. Im veronica johnson. Were going to show you local stories making news this week. Among them, shes been missing for a month now and experts say cases like hers on are the rise. The news4 iteam show how they use hightech tools to find missing people with dementia. And d. C. s car is finally up and running. Now, can it stay that way . We travel to atlanta to check out their equally as troubled system. Its a scam. How investigators say this man is trying to rip off d. C. Residents. But first, one of d. C. s most iconic bridges in danger of shutting down. Transportation reporter adam tusk went inside the Memorial Bridge to check out the deteriorating conditions. His story is on our nbc washington app. Now we are learning how much it would cost to keep the bridge open. News4s tom sherwood has that story from along the potomoc river. Reporter thousands of cars travel across the bridge but its the daily wear and tear of 68,000 vehicles and the corrosion of aging underpinning that threaten to shut down the bridge in five years if massive repairs arent done. That cost, 250 million the u. S. Parks service doesnt have. Bridge is going to take a coalition of regional partners. Reporter the Memorial Bridge repairs would take up nearly all of the u. S. Parks Service Budget for all parks across the country. But it needs to be done. But when you talk about the bridge being so bad it has to close, thats a heck of a decision to make. It is. And its not one we take lightly. But whats most important is for drivers and pedestrians to be safe. Reporter the bridge first built in 1932 also is used by many pedestrians and cyclists. I go across it every day on my bicycle and travel over it on my vehicle and on occasion its been a real problem. A local family got much needed closure after a week of wondering if their grandmothers bo body had disappeared. It turns out that the body in the casket is their loved one. Virginia grays body was home two weeks ago and looked in the casket and did not recognize gray. They went back this week and got a second look and brought along their grandmothers personal doctor. The physician determined that it is my grandmother. We had them strip her down of all of her makeup and put her in her natural as much of her Natural Light as possible. Last month, gray fell unconscious and went to the hospital and died a short time later. Her family says they dont blame the funeral home for what happened and now can start planning her funeral. Well, a warning about those popular quizes that pop up on your facebook feed. You know, the ones that ask which Disney Princess or star wars character are you. This seems like its harmless fun but in some cases hackers use those quizzes to hide malicious software. It seems harmless but you never know who is really asking you for the information. The more they know about you, the more ways that they can trick you into doing Something Like clicking on a link that you should not click on. So here are four things that will help you protect yourself. Be cautious of quizzes and poll us that want you to sign in. Treat your email address like cash and dont click on links just because a friend posted it on their timeline. Finally, only participate in quizzes that protect your reputable data. After a decade of delays, the street car system is up and running but how the citys costly new experiment will turn out remains unclear. Tonight, we take you down south to atlanta, georgia, to see how their street car system turned out and find out what d. C. Can learn from it. Im adam atlanta. Why are we here . Were checking out the street car system here. What else . Atlantas street car system opened about a year ago and there have been a lot of Lessons Learned from this system. For the d. C. Region, atlanta offe cautionary tales. The first year was full of a lot of missteps for the street car. Reporter management problems, lapsed safety checks, even issues with the homeless who decided the free atlanta street car was a great place to take shelter. Andrea simmons is the transportation reporter for the Atlanta Journal constitution. Some of these things we probably had to learn through experience and, you know, the mayor is likening it to scraping your knee. Reporter d. C. Is hoping a bandage is not needed while its free to ride right now, atlanta recently charging a buck to ride. And at least anecdotally, ridership has dropped. Its not worth it. Its a waste of time. They are too slow. Its like riding a turtle. Reporter atlanta is not looking for payers to pay for their system. They are looking for taxes for the development that will spur along the corridor. We dont have a specific number that were trying to achieve. Reporter development is a big part of the game in d. C. As well but the question is still being asked, does all of this make sense . For right now, at least for d. C. And atlanta, the answer will probably only be revealed by time. Its up in the air whether should could be called a success or not. In atlanta, adam tusk, news4. Another long battle could soon be coming to an end. The lastditch effort a local Power Company is making to finalize a massive merger. And it doesnt look like there is snow on the ground t black grind is snow and now d. C. Says it has a plan to get rid of it. 69 flights of stairs carrying 70 pounds of equipment and do it in just ten minutes. A group of d. C. Firefighters did that last weekend in the annual stare climb challenge in seattle, washington. It helps raise money for the leukemia and lymphoma society. News4 visited the Training Facility in the southwest to watch the firefighters prepare for that grueling event. Our job is to save lives and we can do that more than just coming in to work. We can help fight cancer. Our brothers and sisters on the job are getting cancer all the time because of the hazards we face. 2,000 firefighters across the country competed in the stare climb this year. That looks heavy and hard. Well, the lastditch efforts by pepco to save controversial 7 million merger. The company asked the Service Commission to reconsider the conditions it put on the merger last month. Failure to act could mean the whole thing gets derailed. Some civic groups and city leaders say its just a bad deal and at this point its not clear when or if the deal will even go through. Well, he says hes your neighbor and asks for your money. Police are warning residents about a guy scamming people in several parts of the city. The last incident happened just last weekend in the navy yard area, a welldressed man in a suit comes up, knocks on your door and says hes your neighbor bruce. He tells you hes locked it out with his keys and his wallet at home and then he asks you for some money so that he can catch a cab or take metro. Knocking on my door yesterday and its sad that somebody would take advantage of goodhearted people. It is sad. We have this police say he hasnt committed any crime. But they wanted to get the word out and urge you not to give him any money. Well, youll see some unique performances at the Kennedy Center this season. The artists who will lead the movement to bring more hiphop to the classic venue. And they are some of the most difficult missing persons cases. Next, the news4 iteam is on the trail with using Mapping Technology with hopes of bringing confused, scared and in desperate need of medication, its a terrible combination for people with dementia when they wander away from their homes and too often it ends in tragedy. Tisha thompson and the news4 iteam show how experts are cracking through the confusion to find them. Reporter nancy spent her life taking care of other people. Working as a montessori teacher and a caregiver for the elderly until suddenly she became confused. The last couple of months she was suffering from what we thought was rapid onset dementia. Reporter her son says it happened quickly. She abruptly lost 30 pounds and this picture was taken a few hours before she vanished. We had a hard time getting her out of the apartment so we werent overly concerned with that. Reporter but on february 8th, his 66yearold mother disappeared next to these woods. This sistofficer says his dog c cover the same amount of territory with his nose as 100 volunteers walking side by side. The officer says theres no one else like him in the Greater Washington area. Search coordinator working with officers to find the training. How many officers do we have . Ten on the call right now. Reporter dementia searches have jumped in montgomery county. Its going to keep growing. A person walking 2 miles an hour, 6 1 2 hours, the entire county is our search area. No one can search that amount of property. Reporter so his team uses a lot of maps. You can see, this is our 500 meter ring. Reporter using statistical models to plot out the probability area to search using Research Found in this book, lost person behavior written by this man, robert kester. The fatality rate for dementia cases is twice that of lost children. Reporter he travels the world training search crews how to find all kinds of missing people. For a long rescue was used to looking for hikers and hunters and missing children and dementia victims were not meeting the same pattern. They were closer and in locations that were in areas that were really thick, transitional zones. Reporter but by studying hundreds of reallife dementia cases, he created Mapping Software that allows police to simply drop an icon at the last known location and the computer will highlight the most likely places they should start searching. His Research Found they follow the same pattern. They walk in a relatively Straight Line until they bump into something. Since they tend to be older, they take the path of least resistance, sticking to roads and trails that go downhill and often towards water, which they mistakenly believe will be an easy, flat place to walk. If they get into trouble, they wont call up for help or even answer if someone calls out their. Theres a loss of personal vision so thats all youre going to see. A lot of people with dementia are looking down at the ground. So as i walk now, i cant make it. My feet are struck. I come here and this is it. We look at it and we go, why wouldnt you just walk around this . But a person with dementia, this may be enough, i cant go around it and we will find them standing just like this. Reporter nancys children now wonder if their mother didnt realize her home was literally right next to her and instead walked off into the woods trying to find it. Shes now been missing for a month and the case has become personal for huggins after more than a decade of searching for people, shes the only dementia patient he has yet to find. If you have someone in your family with dementia, there are things you can do now to help them find your loved one if they ever wander away. Weve put the entire list on our bracelet and filling out a detailed form because even if theyve never wandered away before, the experts all say the chances are high it will probably happen often without warning. Well, its one of the most popular and beautiful times of the year. Here in d. C. And this year, its coming a lot earlier than normal where you can see theres a pretty cool change coming to the Kennedy Center as it gears up for its next performance season. The producer will join the artistic director for hiphop culture. Quest is considered a pioneer. We hear it everywhere. You cannot escape that beat and that beat, that pulse is what were going to connect to at the Kennedy Center. The announced that hiphop will become part of its core programming. Other changes this season, soprano fleming will take on new roles. Into well, youre not the only one who is loving warm weather this week. So with the Cherry Blossom trees and now that means that those famous blossoms will likely arrive much earlier than expected. The National Park service now says that the peek bloom around the basin will fall between march 18th and the 23rd, a whole two weeks earlier than the park officials announced just last week. This does not impact, though, the dates of the Cherry Blossom festival. Well, the sunshine and warm temperatures that weve been having is good news for everyone. Theres a big mess left behind at rfk stadium where they dumped all of the snow after the january blizzard. News4 is where all of that trash is going to go now that the snow is gone. Reporter to give you an idea of how msn about, just take a look. More than six weeks later, this is what the snow pile looks like today. Its gross but im glad they put it somewhere so we could drive and park. Reporter what else was scooped up by the plows . Today, lot seven is a debris field. And, yes, there is snow under this mess. Much of the runoff is going into these drains that lead directly into the Anacostia River a few feet away. D. C. Water tweeted, the melting snow water posing a problem for the environment. And its created parking issues for its fans. This weeks rock roll marathon has had to move the finish line and concert held in lot 7. The d. C. Public works has a plan to clean up the huge mess left behind by the snow piles. It ss be bales around the inlets to the river and the debris will be raked up and transported away and the entire area swept. I guess im trusting that they are mitigating all of the bad stuff as much as they can. So i know its not great. Its pretty gross. The district hopes to have the lot cleaned up by the end of the month and then it will have to be repaved and the d. C. Department of environment says it is monitoring the river. They say so far theres been no real damage. Well, thats all for news4 this week. Im veronica johnson. Thanks for joining us, as always. 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