Dan Riviello, whose father, Rodney, has been missing since Tuesday, says he “could not be more grateful” for the outpouring of support from people who have come together to look for the 69-year-old Manomet man.
“There are no words,” Riviello said Thursday afternoon. “It’s unbelievable and incredible. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect hundreds if not thousands of strangers to dedicate their time, energy and money for a man they’ve never met.”
He said he has tried to reconstruct the day his father disappeared.
Rodney Riviello, who worked as a meat cutter in a supermarket in upstate New York, moved here with his wife, Julie, about 18 months ago.
He had some mini-strokes, and his problem-solving skills were “diminished,” Dan said.
His parents took short walks every morning, Dan said, often to a local store where he would pick up his copy of the New York Post. But on Tuesday, Julie was visiting her son in Provincetown, where he works as assistant town manager.
She left early after preparing Rodney’s meals. She felt comfortable leaving him for the day, Dan said.
“We didn’t have any concerns about his staying home alone,” he said.
Dan believes his father must have decided to go on his walk, part of his daily routine.
At around 7 a.m. Dan texted his father to let him know his mother had arrived in Provincetown. But his father didn’t respond. He tried a few more times before asking a neighbor to check on him.
The neighbor went into the house, but he wasn’t there. That’s when the family called the police.
They don’t know exactly what happened next but have been piecing together a timeline from comments posted on Facebook.
Dan believes a construction worker found Rodney after he had fallen and brought him to the Manomet fire station. He was then taken to Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Plymouth.
But neither Emergency Medical Services nor the hospital have provided a clear picture of what happened next.
Medical records showed Rodney had suffered a fractured nose and a bruise on his head, Dan said. A CT scan showed issues with his brain that could have signaled cognitive problems.
“I cannot imagine how it didn’t give someone pause to say this man was hit in the head,” Dan said. “What they noted was not normal. He had no wallet. No phone. They may have asked [whether] we should call the family, and he probably said no.”
Kristina Murray, a spokesperson for Beth Israel Deaconess said “patient privacy” prevents it from commenting on an individual’s treatment.
“Our thoughts are with the family as they navigate this very challenging time,” she said in an email. “BID Plymouth has fully cooperated with the Plymouth Police Department and will continue to do so.”
Rodney left the hospital at 11 a.m., Dan said, but since he hasn’t been spotted on any cameras in the area around the hospital, he thinks his father got into a car somewhere — trying to get back home before his wife returned from Provincetown.
Despite the massive search effort undertaken by police and the public, Rodney still hasn’t been found.
On Thursday afternoon, with no clues about his father’s whereabouts forthcoming, Dan consulted a medium.
“It’s not something I would normally do, but one of the volunteers knows a medium and she wanted to help,” he said. “This whole experience has been unbelievable. So why not one more unbelievable thing?”
Dan said that since his father’s cognitive state recently worsened, he’s relied on his son to do repairs around the house for him, including fixing his TV.
“That’s been the hardest thing,” he said. “It’s started to set in. I can’t help but thinking he’s somewhere thinking that I’ll be able to fix it. I’m his fixer and there is so little I can do.”
Andrea Estes can be reached at andrea@plymouthindependent.org.