MINGO COUNTY, W.Va. (WSAZ) – We are following up on a WSAZ investigation into the disappearance and death of a man with dementia.

We told you about Chuck Carroll, who was taken from an assisted living facility to a hospital in Huntington. However, he managed to escape from the facility and died.

WSAZ aired a series of investigations and a documentary exploring what went wrong and how a similar tragedy could have been prevented.

53 Days | Chuck’s story

A teacher in Mingo County saw our documentary and challenged her students to watch it and come up with their own ideas on how to better protect people with dementia.

These students’ ideas have soared and reached places they never thought possible.

“When this first started we really thought it was going to be a one-day class,” said Angel Jude, Mingo Center Health Sciences instructor.

Now, this one-day lesson is being learned across the country and is taught by high school staff and students in West Virginia’s Mingo County.

Sager: “What was the most meaningful part of this for you?

“I’m actually just sharing his story because when I go up and talk about it, I don’t look at it like I’m giving a presentation, I look at it like I’m doing something for him. Unfortunately, he was never able to share his story. “We want to raise as much awareness as we can about this ongoing issue,” said Dalaney Grimmett, a senior at Mingo Central High School.

The “he” Grimmett is referring to is Chuck Carroll.

Carroll documented dementia. He was taken to a local hospital for fever and vomiting at the end of 2021, but was able to walk away and die.

His body was found 53 days later in an annex a few blocks from the hospital.

The number of days that passed between Carroll’s disappearance and the discovery of her body became the title of WSAZ’s documentary, which aired in December 2022. The focus of the documentary was on Carroll’s story and the WSAZ investigative team’s search for answers in the months following his death.

So how does WSAZ’s documentary connect to a health science classroom in Mingo County, West Virginia?

In January 2023, Mingo Central High School health sciences teacher Andrea Clark gave her students an assignment: Watch “53 Days” and come up with ideas to better protect people with dementia.

To say that these students took the task seriously would be an understatement.

In May 2023, students pitched their ideas about purple papers and purple sensor-enabled pants to West Virginia education leaders. These leaders were so impressed that they awarded the students $30,000 grants to advance their projects.

Representatives from Logan Regional Medical Center and Williamson Memorial Hospital attended the meeting that day, promising to implement the student’s ideas.

“We intend to use all of your ideas to help us and our patients,” Logan Regional Chief Nursing Officer Jeanette Sexton said in May 2023.

Logan Regional Medical Center leaders kept that promise. At the end of October 2024, our staff was given in-service training on the use of purple trousers and papers.

Williamson Memorial Hospital has plans for community education in the future.

Most of the students who initially worked on the project have now graduated. In some cases this may have marked an end point for their work.

But not in Mingo Central. Students there say they feel the pressure to persist and make their older peers proud.

Sager: “How do you feel about taking on this project and handing it over from previous seniors and juniors?”

Feye: “It was a little hard to keep up with what the seniors did last year, especially since all the great ideas we had like pants, newspapers and the like needed to be acknowledged. But to be able to cover this now on a national scale has been really really great. “I’m still in touch with a few of last year’s seniors and giving them updates on the project.”

This national audience heard students’ ideas for the first time in October 2024.

Seniors, Grimmett and Feye traveled to Arizona to attend the National Health Science Consortium Conference.

The Mingo Central seniors were the only two students in the country to present to health science educators from 48 different states.

Feye: “We had the 53 Days Documentary on our board. We let the audience watch the whole thing from start to finish because we felt it was essential for them to have all the information, especially about how beautifully shot the documentary was.

Sager: “Did you watch 24, 25 minutes?”

Feye: “Yes.”

Grimmett: “One lady actually cried. Yes, we really touched his heart with the story, so it would touch anyone’s heart. “He actually asked us if we would Zoom call his class and present it to his class.”

This class is located in Florida and is scheduled to take place via Zoom.

Across the country, students say they want to learn the ideas of another class in Colorado and try to implement them in their own state.

Sager: “Has this project developed and grown more than you thought?”

Jude: “Beyond what we could have imagined. We have found that if you set the bar high for these students, they will achieve it. They will meet. They will overcome it. “Once you get that out in the community and start presenting that, other people will get involved.”

It’s a passion project that educators and students believe can protect those who need it most in the Mountain State and across the country.

So what happens next for students? They say they plan to apply for the SPARK West Virginia grant. It’s like Shark Tank in West Virginia.

The students hope that an entrepreneur will invest and help them with the business side of their project, but they say the sky is the limit. They hope to eventually implement their idea as a standard of care nationwide.

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