But in recent years, Ron Tarnowski, an Air Force veteran and retired captain for the local fire department, began showing signs of early-stage dementia, his son and police told The Washington Post. Suddenly, the tough man with a “commanding presence,” adventurous spirit and the build of a former football player needed to be taken care of, too.
On Saturday afternoon, eight days after the couple went missing, the
family received their answer, and a tragic end to their strenuous search. A U.S. Border Patrol helicopter found the couple’s Chevy Tahoe on an overgrown, abandoned driveway in a swampy area off the road just two miles away from the family’s hunting property. They were near Brookston, a town about 30 miles from their Duluth home.