Blind Lake Ronkonkoma man grateful to police dispatcher

As she drove home to Mastic Beach on a cold October night in 2009, Suffolk County Police Department dispatcher Kerry Allen-Lever couldn't shake one call that day from her head - the report that a legally blind, diabetic man from Ronkonkoma, age 64, had gone missing.

Allen-Lever reached Shirley. There, she came upon a man walking along Montauk Highway, pushing a small shopping cart on rickety rocks. It was James Strong, the missing man, who had wandered more than 13 miles from his home.

Just after midnight - more than five hours after Strong had left home after an argument with his wife - Allen-Lever ushered Strong into her car to warm up while she called police to come pick him up.

The dispatcher, a civilian employee, visited Strong and his wife, Arlene, at their home Wednesday. It was the first time Allen-Lever and James Strong had met since the night she rescued him.

"My friends keep telling me I must have a guardian angel somewhere," Strong said, motioning to Allen-Lever. "It's nice to see her. It's been a long time."

Strong, now 66 and retired, is a Vietnam War veteran who had been in a helicopter that was shot down. He also survived a crash in 1992 with an 18-wheel truck that left him badly injured.

"I don't know what life I'm on now," Strong said.

Arlene Strong said their dispute that night stemmed from Strong's frustration over his Veterans Affairs benefits. She remembered that Strong had left at about 6:45 p.m., saying he was going out for coffee, and she called police at 9 p.m., asking them to look for a man with a blue shopping cart.

Wednesday, the cart was located outside the Strongs' front door, next to the flower garden that James Strong tends for his wife, who loves flowers.

"I'm extremely grateful," Arlene Strong said. "I'm very glad I just finally get to meet her."

Allen-Lever, 42, described Strong as disoriented but communicative on the night she rescued him. At first, he didn't react to her headlights, she said. That was her clue that he was visually disabled and might be the person police were seeking; soon after, he identified himself as James Strong.

"We just hugged and cried," Allen-Lever said. "He was a little shocked."

The night Strong went missing was a tense one at work, Allen-Lever said. As a public safety dispatcher who coordinates air and ground searches, she kept checking the log to see if Strong had been found.

But her shift ended before he was located.

"The temperature was getting really cold that night," said Allen-Lever, a civilian police department employee for 10 years. "Before we left, we said a prayer that he find his way home."

Allen-Lever answered her own prayer.