Sarnia police have conducted 405 missing person investigations since January 1, 2022.
The figure was shared by Insp. Leo Murphy Thursday morning, while he provided the police services board with an overview of how they handle missing person investigations.
"We've had a dramatic increase in missing person occurrences with our police service," said Murphy.
"The count is up from previous years, [representing] a 71 per cent increase over the previous year. This year we've had 50 missing person investigations and that's up 16 from the previous year, at 41 per cent."
Murphy said the majority of the reports involved youth.
"The 10 to 19 years of age [range] takes up a good majority of our calls; 120 males have been reported missing between the age of 10 and 19, and 64 females."
Murphy said in most cases they're able to locate the person within seven days.
"The smaller portion are those very serious investigations, where perhaps people are vulnerable, people are unaccounted for, or there may be some suspicious parts of the investigation."
Cst. David Ferrera, an emergency response team leader and search and rescue manager, highlighted the extensive efforts to locate a missing 75-year-old man earlier this year.
"We had the emergency response team throughout the six-day search, we had the drone flying continuously and our coverage with the emergency response team and all of the other resources was 24/7," said Ferrera.
He added that the Ontario Search & Rescue Volunteer Association and other emergency responders assisted as well.
"We had both Sarnia and Point Edward Fire Rescue, the OPP supported us with canine and emergency response team members, as well as their aviation [crews]."
Ferrera said the drone is a relatively new piece of equipment for them.
"It was invaluable in helping us search areas. It has a zoom and it also has a thermal camera, which can detect body heat, which makes it valuable to a missing person [investigation]."
While the search for the missing elderly man came to a tragic end, Sarnia police confirmed Thursday the investigations into the unrelated disappearances of three other men continues.
Assistance is still being sought to locate Trevor Morley-Wood, Dustin Ireson and Trevor Chaput.
Anyone with information on the individuals is asked to call Sarnia police at 519-344-8861 extension 0 or Sarnia-Lambton Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.