Family uses social media to find loved one who became homeless
TEMPLE TERRACE, Fla. - A 55-year-old man has been found safe after he went missing over a month ago.
Richard "Dickie" Grimes was last seen on May 30 in Temple Terrace. After weeks with no answers, Grimes was found on July 2. During that long month, Richard's sister, Julie Grimes Hulley, always held out hope he'd be found.
"Early June, I created a Facebook page to try and locate my brother," says Julie Grimes Hulley.
Grimes became homeless after losing his job in 2018. A fire started at his mother's home, and it couldn't be saved. Grimes was forced to jump from home to home, with no permanant place to live. He contacted his mother this past Easter, but then his family never heard from him again.
"We got a lot of tips, one was that there was potential foul play involved in his disappearance," Hulley said.
Temple Terrace police were contacted to help investigate, but it became difficult to do a missing persons case, because Grimes was homeless. Dickie Grimes was not physically missing from an address and his sister, Julie, did not have a power of attorney.
As a result of the suspected foul play, Julie Hulley reached out to "Texas EquuSearch." She also filed a report with the Tampa Police Department's Missing Persons Division, which jump-started the search for Dickie.
"On July 2nd, I got a call from Sydney Davis from 'Trinity Cafe' for the homeless who said my brother was eating lunch here," Hulley recalled. "My whole body shook, I never thought I would experience homelessness in my own family."
But here she was facing the realities of it first-hand.
"Trinity Cafe" fed Dickie for over a month, never suspecting that he was a missing person. The Hulley family presented a check to the cafe for finding him.
Dickie will need to be medically evaluated and cared for, but the Grimes family is happy to see him home safe and moving forward with his life.