In December, Todd Jackson, walked away from his Long Beach home and didn’t come back; police and others searched in vain for months.

As is their policy, the Long Beach police detectives assigned to missing persons never gave up. Missing persons’ cases are active until the missing are found, police said.

In Jackson’s case, that was about five months.

Unable to talk, the 46-year-old just disappeared. Niece Jeniece Fleming, 28, of Indianapolis maintained regular contact with Detective Robert Woods, who pinned Jackson’s photograph above his computer for months.

Police found Jackson living among other homeless people in Lincoln Park — about a block away from the police headquarters, Woods said. He was arrested for urinating in public, and his fingerprints identified him.

“It’s kind of funny if you think about it because thank goodness he had to go,” Fleming said.

LBPD officials are dispatched an average of five times every day on reports of missing people in the city, and they manage to locate an average of about 4.9 people a day, too.

There’s only about 25 people currently listed as missing for more than a year’s time — and those people will remain on the list until they are found, no matter how long it takes, said Detective Erik Herzog.

“The oldest one we have is from 1976 for a man named Evan Snider,” Herzog said. “He was 34 years old at the time, and his name will remain in the file until we find him.”

Although Herzog and other detectives suspect that Snider, and possibly others, may have been a victim of serial killer Randy Kraft — an incarcerated Long Beach born man also known as “Scorecard Killer” or “Freeway Killer” — they haven’t been able to prove that or locate Snider or his remains.

Others on the list may have been victims of homicide, and officers have suspicions that at least two people on the list may have run off to Mexico. Either way, LBDP officials will never stop trying to solve those puzzles.

About half of missing people reports are for adults, and the other half are for juveniles, according to LBPD. Seasoned homicide detectives, who work the missing persons detail in rotation, treat each case seriously, whether they are looking for a senior citizen or a chronic runaway teenager or a youngster under the age of 12.

In cases where they believe someone is in danger, they reach out to the media and the public for help to locate the missing, but they’re on their own in most cases.

More and more, Herzog said the trend in missing persons reports is elderly people walking away from their homes. With an aging population, the issue is expected to worsen, and he said it’s becoming more critical than ever for seniors to wear some form of identification at all times because their fingerprints may not be in the system.

If you have an elder who disappears, “My advice is, don’t wait too long to call the police, and make sure you have a photograph ready to give us,” Herzog said.

Jackson was considered a walkaway.

“When I got the call saying he’d been found, I started crying,” she said. Police helped her get Jackson proper identification so he could fly to Indianapolis.

Fleming still cannot believe she found her uncle. She said the police helped connect her to a security guard at City Hall, who then helped her find her uncle at the Long Beach Rescue Mission.

When he arrived in Indianapolis to live with his niece, Jackson gave Fleming two thumbs up.

Woods said it was frustrating to look so hard for so long only to discover the man was so close.

“His niece just kept calling, and I knew how much she cared, and it’s such a success story that he’s been able to find his family and that he’s no longer homeless,” Woods said. “This really epitomizes the kind of success stories we like to see.”

Ashleigh Ruhl is the editor of the Grunion Gazette and can be reached at aruhl@gazettes.com.