A bald eagle based at a Palo Alto zoo who had gone missing after flying away during a demonstration at a local park earlier this week, was spotted Thursday afternoon, raising hopes that it will soon return to its home nest, officials said.

Sequoia, who is nearly 28 years old, was doing a regularly-scheduled flight demonstration on Monday at Byxbee Park in Palo Alto when she got distracted by another bird and flew off “like a terror after it,” said John Aikin, director of the Palo Alto Junior Museum & Zoo, where the majestic bird lives.

“I am desperate to find her and bring her home safely,” said Aikin.

The zoo has put a radio transmitter on Sequoia and was able to track her movement through Palo Alto and into Portola Valley on Tuesday before losing the signal. By Friday afternoon, they picked up the signal again and even had a visual spotting of her out in west Palo Alto, where officials, including Aikin, where headed to get her.

“We’re closing in,” he said.

Aikin first came across Sequoia back in 1988 when she was just 5 months old and was found shot in Humboldt County, an incident that left her tail paralyzed and part of one of her toes removed. The rescued animal was offered to the San Francisco Zoo, where Aikin worked at the time.

Years later, the zoo offered Sequoia back to Aikin, who had moved onto his job in Palo Alto.

“We’ve grown and changed a lot in those years,” Aikin said.

Sequoia has flown away before - including for three days in 2013 - but she usually comes back within an hour or by the end of the afternoon, Aikin said.

Hamed Aleaziz is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: haleaziz@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @haleaziz