Police track cell phone, locate missing 88-year-old Delaware County woman

RADNOR TOWNSHIP, Pa. (WPVI) -- Police located a missing 88-year-old Delaware County woman after tracking her cell phone to several locations around the Delaware Valley.

"We're lucky to find my mom tonight," son Mike Margolis told Action News Sunday night.

Lilian Margolis' 21 hour frightening ordeal began as she left her son's house in Villanova at 9:00 p.m. Saturday for her home at the Maris Grove Senior Living in Glen Mills, Pa.

But police say she went south through dark and unfamiliar roads.

Just before midnight, she stopped for directions 72 miles away at the Harford County Sheriff's Office in Bel Air, Maryland.

When family reported her missing in the morning, Radnor Township police used technology to track her whereabouts.

She didn't answer her cell phone, but it was on and sending signals to the nearest towers giving police critical clues.

A signal was reported at 9:37 a.m. in New Garden, Chester County and more than an hour later in Kennett Square.

At noon, the cell phone hit a tower on Old Marple Road in Springfield, Delaware County followed 42 minutes later in Upper Darby, but police say she didn't stop there.

"Through Philadelphia, up through Montgomery County, then back through Philadelphia and Delaware County where she was located," Lt. Andy Block of the Radnor Township Police Department said.

Just after 5:00 p.m. Sunday, there was another ping near Upper Darby. Police there were told to look for her. Within an hour, she was spotted at State Road and Lansdowne Avenue.

Her Nissan Maxima had a flat tire.

"The cell phone was everything on this, simply because without a cell phone we would have had no idea where she was," Block said.

Margolis was taken to the Upper Darby Police Department where she was reunited with her family.

"The police, the Radnor police, were great and all the other agencies that helped," Mike Margolis said.

Mike says his mother is doing fine, but is understandably tired after driving all night trying to find her way home.