When those who wander are lost, Project Lifesaver makes them easy to find. But keeping costs down has been a struggle for the Area Agency on Aging.
A couple months ago, deputies were dispatched from the Athens County Sheriff’s office to find an elderly citizen that had wandered off.
Traditionally, that was a job that could have taken hours — if not days — to complete and might have ended in tragedy. But the officers found the missing person in half an hour, before disaster could strike.
“We’ve been able to find missing persons faster than ever before,” Athens County Sheriff Rodney Smith said.
The reason for the quick recovery time is Project Lifesaver. The Lifesaver itself is a transmitter that goes around the wrist or ankle of a person who might easily get lost, such as a child with autism or an elder with Alzheimer’s.
The sheriff’s office has been part of the project since 2004, and claims the transmitter has helped lower recovery time by 95 percent, Smith said.
Even though all members of the program have caregivers, it’s easy for caregivers to leave the room for a moment and their patient to wander off, Smith said.
“When we get the call that someone is missing, we head to the missing person’s last known area,” Smith said. “We hear a chirping sound through our receiver, and as the chirp gets louder, it means we are getting closer.”
“It’s saved us so much time,” he said.
The project was designed by a former police captain, Gene Saunders, who started Project Lifesaver as pilot program in Chesapeake, Virginia, in 1998.
“They were using radio tracking technology for wildlife and he thought, why couldn’t he do it for people?” Elizabeth Kappes, a spokeswoman for the nonprofit organization, said.
His community had a particular problem with Alzheimer patients, so Saunders started giving the patients bands and educating their caretakers on how to alert the police of a missing person, Kappes said.
The program was a success, and quickly spread around the state. Project Lifesaver now operates in 48 states, six Canadian provinces and Australia, Kappes said.
The biggest problem for the organization — and for communities around the country — is how to keep costs down, Kappes said.
Cathy Ash is the program manager for the Area Agency on Aging, the part of the Buckeye Hills-Hocking Valley Regional Development District that handles Project Lifesaver. Athens is just one of the eight counties she oversees, with a total of 96 patients, 19 of whom reside in Athens County.
“Anyone with a cognitive impairment, who has a 24/7 caregiver, is eligible to be a part of Project Lifesaver,” Ash said. “So far, we’ve made it available to join at no cost.”
But it’s been a struggle for Ash and the Area Agency on Aging. The transmitters cost $300 each, and a year’s supply of batteries cost an additional $60-$70. The agency receives money from the Older Americans Act, the Family Caregiver Support program and recently partnered with the Veterans Service Commission, Ash said. Those groups have helped cover the cost of batteries and a few transmitters, but it has not been nearly enough, she maintained.
“We don’t have an abundance of these things lying around,” Ash said. “In Washington County, we had a waiting list because we didn’t have enough money.”
Sometimes Ash is able to secure grants, such as the $13,000 one last year that went toward upgrading the sheriff’s offices receivers for searches. Each county has two receivers, and Ash said they had become obsolete and needed to be replaced. The money from the grants is now long gone.
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Ash has looked for alternate sources of funding, saying she needed to “shake the bushes” every once in a while. In addition to grants, the Area Agency on Aging has relied on donations and fundraisers to ensure the program remains free to patients.
“We try to tap into as many sources as we can,” she said. “We are constantly on it. It never ends.”
Ash admitted the Area Agency on Aging would have a patient pay for the transmitter if their family could afford it.
“If someone has the money to pay for it, we’ll let them,” she said.
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