Department Has Commitment From Local Business to Buy Tracking Device
By Ken Kosky, Munster Times (Indiana)
Porter County Sheriff’s Department officials hope to never again have a search for a missing dementia patient end tragically.
Chief Deputy David Lain said Tuesday he will soon purchase a system that will allow police to track the exact location of Alzheimer’s disease patients and others who might wander off.
Lain said he has secured a donation of several thousand dollars that will allow for the purchase of 10 wristbands that transmit the location of the wearers, along with two police-operated units designed to pick up the signals. Lain said the system has a 100 percent success rate in finding people within 30 minutes.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have them now,” Sheriff Dave Reynolds said Tuesday at the scene where 75-year-old Joan Trask of Lakes of the Four Seasons was found dead after disappearing from her daughter’s Lakes of the Four Seasons home.
Lain is one of the leaders of Porter County Triad, a group of police and others who work to help seniors. He said Triad has been working to secure funding for the tracking system. Just a week ago, Lain got a commitment from Range Master Outfitters in Chesterton to provide the funding.
Once the equipment arrives, police will publicize the program and hopefully place the wristbands on 10 seniors suffering from dementia. As more donations come in, they can afford to replace the batteries and buy more wristbands, Lain said.
Lain said if the system had been in place this week and Trask had been hooked up, authorities might have had a better chance at a more positive result.
“It doesn’t happen very often, but it can have very tragic results. Anything we can do to increase the odds of finding someone safely and returning them quickly, we will do that,” Lain said.