Colorado city's police department offers free safety devices for at-risk neighbors
Families caring for loved ones with memory loss know they can often wander. The Aurora Police Department says at-risk missing person cases come through almost daily. A grant received by APD has allowed them to give out free safety devices to residents caring for someone who needs special attention.
The device is called AngelSense. The GPS tracking system helps families and law enforcement find adults and children living with Alzheimer's disease, Down syndrome, autism and other related disorders.
It's a small, fob-style device worn by at-risk individuals that notifies loved ones of their location through GPS. When they get lost, the trackers use receivers to locate the signal and find them. It provides a detailed timeline of their day and sends proactive alerts to the caretaker's phone.
Det. Virgil Majors with Aurora Police SVU has been delivering them to families and showing them how to use it.
"The caregiver also has the ability to send the police department their live location when they can't retrieve their loved one themselves. It'll cut down on resources that we use, and it'll cut down on the time they're away from the caregiver as well," said Majors. "Without this device, they're hard to track down."
He says missing at-risk individuals are often non-verbal, or can't remember their address, phone number or name. Personal information is registered to the device that allows police to identify them if found.
"When we get that alert, we know exactly who they are, we know what they're diagnosed with, how to approach them, and how to best help them," explained Majors.
Majors brought one to Elizabeth Johnson last week. Her 2-year-old son has autism.
"He's ran away from me in the grocery store, and I couldn't find him. That was really scary," said Johnson. "It gives me so much more confidence in being able to locate him and knowing that he's okay. I'm actually able to find him without screaming his name."
While CBS Colorado was speaking with Majors about the device, APD received an alert about a missing man with Alzheimer's disease. Richard was eventually found several miles from his home, about a four hour walk away. His daughter, Allison, was relieved he made it back safely.
"Sometimes you don't have happy endings in cases like this," said Allison. "It's very scary. If he can't communicate where he lives or what his phone number is, he can't get in contact with us."
APD delivered an AngelSense device to their home and showed his family how to use it.
"I'm just grateful to all the police officers and everybody that was involved and helped find my father today. I'm eternally grateful for this device," said Allison. "He will not go that far again."
APD still has several AngelSense devices available to give out. The grant also covers a 3 month subscription for the cellular service it requires, and they're working to get more funding to extend that free coverage.
Caretakers interested in a device must live in Aurora and fill out an application to make sure their loved one is eligible.
For more information contact Aurora SVU at 303-739-6229.
