A Kilgore Fire Department thermal drone found a missing elderly woman on an oil lease site in northern Rusk County, Texas, on November 4, about three-quarters of a mile from the home she had walked away from. Kilgore Fire Marshal Terry Linder was flying it, and he spotted her roughly 90 minutes after launch. The Kilgore News Herald, which dates the search to November 4, reports she has Alzheimer’s disease.

The Elderville-Lakeport Volunteer Fire Department took the call near County Road 2126 and County Road 2126A and reached the scene at about 2 p.m. By then she had been gone for close to two hours. Deputies from the Rusk County Sheriff’s Office, the Rusk County Rescue Unit and firefighters from both departments searched on the ground while Linder flew. Christus EMS evaluated her at an ambulance staged nearby and took her for treatment.

The departments have not released her name or said how she was doing when deputies reached her.

Linder Found Her Heat Signature at an Oil Lease Three-Quarters of a Mile Out

Linder launched Kilgore’s drone to cover ground faster than deputies and firefighters could walk it. After about 90 minutes he picked up the woman at an oil lease site roughly three-quarters of a mile (1.2 kilometers) from the residence and relayed her position to deputies, who reached her on foot.

The Elderville-Lakeport department said in a statement reported by the Kilgore News Herald that the thermal camera let crews search a large area and pick out heat signatures, and that without it “the outcome of this incident could have been significantly different.” CBS19, which broke the story on the evening of November 4, puts her time missing before crews arrived at close to two hours. Add Linder’s 90 minutes in the air and she had been outside for more than three hours by the time deputies walked her out.

Kilgore Flies a DJI Mini 5 Pro Beside the Thermal Drone That Made the Find

The Kilgore Fire Department operates two multi-mission drones for fire suppression, fire investigations and searches, per the Kilgore News Herald. Its photo shows both on a department vehicle’s hood. A DJI Mini 5 Pro labeled KILG_FD_UAS1 sits in front, with a larger folding aircraft carrying a thermal payload behind it.

None of the three local reports name the second aircraft, and the department describes the one that found her only as its thermal imaging drone.

The man flying it has worked both sides of this call. The City of Kilgore announced Linder’s hiring as fire marshal on December 29, 2025 after Ryan Riley moved up to chief. He retired from the Kilgore Police Department as a lieutenant in 2022, previously served as Rusk County’s fire marshal, spent 2022 to 2025 as a deputy fire marshal in Smith County, and still volunteers part-time with Elderville-Lakeport, the department that put out the call.

DroneXL’s Take

Kilgore joins a run of missing-senior finds DroneXL has covered this year where a drone did in minutes what people on foot could not do in hours. Commerce City’s Skydio X10 found a 76-year-old in 24 minutes in February, Portage County’s thermal drone found a 91-year-old in 43 minutes in May, and St. Cloud’s found a 73-year-old in a cornfield after a State Patrol plane and a DNR helicopter had searched for hours without him. The hood of that Kilgore truck shows what a working search program looks like in a Texas city of 13,000. It is a consumer DJI and a thermal aircraft, flown by a fire marshal who knows the county roads. The FCC’s Covered List decision of December 22 bars new authorizations for foreign-made drones, and as I wrote this week, no Congress can lift it before 2029. Kilgore gets to keep flying what it owns. My read is that when UAS1 eventually goes down hard, Kilgore will want to replace it with the same kind of affordable aircraft, and Washington has just taken that aircraft off the shelf.

Sources: CBS19, Kilgore News Herald, KETK, KLTV

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.