During December of last year, the Pismo Beach Police Department needed help locating a missing 73-year-old man suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Officers contacted the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Department, which, after reviewing some background information about the man and his lifestyle, recruited the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department.
Luckily, the man’s family had recently signed him up for Project Lifesaver, a tracking program run through county sheriff’s departments and used to locate people suffering from Alzheimer’s and other incapacitating illnesses.
For five hours, law enforcement officials searched for the man, using squad cars and even a helicopter.
Eventually, the search and rescue team followed the transmitter signal to the Santa Maria Speedway, where they found the man hiding in the bushes. He had apparently pedaled his bicycle from Pismo Beach to Santa Maria, gotten confused, and then gotten lost.
“Without that transmitter, he would have been out there for a very long time,” said search and rescue captain Jon Wordsworth, who’s also director of San Luis Obispo County’s Project Lifesaver.
Developed in Virginia in the late 1990s, the white, watch-sized Project Lifesaver tracking devices fit onto a person’s wrist. They transmit a dedicated FM frequency, so the signal won’t diminish because of interfering cell phones, radios, and TVs.
County sheriff’s deputies use hand-held receivers, directional antennas, and headphones to track the signals when searching for a missing person.
To date, the system has been used to find more than 1,000 people unharmed.
The San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Department has used Project Lifesaver for four years to locate missing people up and down the Central Coast. As of July 31, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department is using it, too.
The launch is great news for the Central Coast Alzheimer’s Association, area coordinator Roy Allen said.
“[Project Lifesaver] is the absolute best system out there,” Allen told the Sun. “It’s very effective.”
“The odds of a loved one being found in good shape greatly diminishes after the first 24 hours”—especially if the person is afflicted with a condition like dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, Allen said.
He said that the devices have also been used to locate autistic children who have gone missing.
According to Sgt. Brad McVay at the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department, Project Lifesaver is used in 43 states, and just reached the West Coast in the last five years.
When someone goes missing, police alert the county sheriff’s department, which then sends missing person notices out to all dispatchers.
Project Lifesaver keeps profiles on all the people participating in the program and tracks their traveling patterns to determine the most likely places to search.
In the past, finding a missing person with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia could take anywhere from several hours to several days. Now people wearing the Project Lifesaver devices can be found in as little as 20 minutes.
In Santa Barbara County, the sheriff’s department raised money (about $16,000) to pay for the equipment. However, the department is still working on garnering funds for training.
While people can participate in the program for free, McVay said that it costs about $25 per month—or $300 per year—to pay for transmitters and batteries, which need to be changed once a month.
Currently, the project is funded by donations from local organizations, such as the Santa Barbara and Santa Maria branches of the Lions Club International.
INFOBOX: It’s all in the wrist
For more information about Project Lifesaver or to sign up for the project, contact the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department at 571-1540 or visit www.sbsheriff.org.
Contact Staff Writer Amy Asman at aasman@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 7-14, 2008.