Advocates want better technology for tracking Alzheimer”s victims

Robert Harvey’s wife was a half-block ahead of him on a walk home from Safeway on Tuesday night. A half-block, until his coat zipper jammed.

P.Ann Garrett-Harvey noticed him back there fiddling with the coat, but she didn’t worry because he always kept up with her, especially in the dark. When she unlocked the door to their house on East Nora Avenue, Garrett-Harvey turned around to let him in. But her husband, who’s in his late 70s and has symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, had disappeared.

“It was like in minutes, he was gone,” Garrett-Harvey said. “For five minutes, I looked around and looked around.”

Then she called police, launching a 60-person search.

Harvey wore a special bracelet that transmits a signal to a tracking unit maintained by the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office through a national program called Project Life Saver. The bracelet should have directed searchers to him, but the transmitter and the tracking unit were set to different frequencies. What should have been a quick search stretched into a nine-hour hunt for Harvey, who was found safe – but cold – near his home at 6 o’clock the next morning.

Lt. Gill Moberly, who headed up the search, said the technology is aging and tuning into the exact frequency is as tricky as tuning into a precise spot on a manual radio dial.

About 20 elderly people in the Spokane area wear the tracking bracelets, which were first introduced here in 2000. Lt. Stephen Jones, who coordinates the Sheriff’s Office’s role in the program, said that although the bracelets have never led local law enforcement officers to a lost person, they’re still of value to people suffering from Alzheimer’s or dementia because they could one day save someone’s life.

“It’s not perfect and it’s not foolproof, but it’s the best we have,” Jones said.

Spokane Police Department spokesman Dick Cottam thinks the community can do better.

“It seems to be an antiquated system. … Last night, it didn’t pick up until they were in the truck with the guy,” he said Wednesday.

In addition to concerns over the lost person’s safety, Cottam said situations like Tuesday’s search drain resources.

“We had hundreds of hours spent, most of it volunteer time, but those volunteers lost a night of sleep,” Cottam said. “It’s upsetting for (Harvey’s) family and for him, I’m sure, and it’s not the best use of police resources when you have normal patrol needs.”

In an era when many skiers don’t go onto a mountain without Global Positioning System devices, which use satellites to track movement, similar technology should be available to Alzheimer’s patients, Cottam said. According to Moberly, the police chaplain’s program recently bought one GPS wristband and plans to experiment with its use.

But GPS has its drawbacks, Jones said. If the users wander deep into a forest or go inside a building, the ability to track them fades. And GPS devices need their batteries changed frequently – not an easy task when dealing with someone who might be reluctant to wear the bracelets at all.

Nationally, Project Life Saver claims that 1,000 searches using the tracking bracelets have resulted in safe returns to family members and that recovery times average less than 30 minutes.

The Alzheimer’s Association Inland Northwest Chapter managed the bracelet program until the maintenance of it became overwhelming, Executive Director Joel Loiacono said. Now, Comfort Keepers, an in-home care agency at 12 E. Rowan Ave. in Spokane, is certified to sell the radio tracking bracelets. They cost $250 to $500, and users pay $25 a month to have their batteries changed.

The Alzheimer’s Association offers a more low-tech option: identification bracelets that tell any stranger who finds a wandering patient that the person is memory impaired. The stranger can call a number and read an ID number to an operator, who will search a computer for information about the found person, including whether they need medications and how to reach family.

Still, the ID bracelet program has drawbacks. Often, Alzheimer’s patients are too disoriented to approach strangers to say they’re lost. Other times, they wander into unpopulated areas.

“If the person walks into a wooded area, unless there’s a bear with a cell phone, it has its deficiencies,” Loiacono said.

Although none of the options is foolproof, using them could prevent a tragedy for the 8,000 to 10,000 people with Alzheimer’s or dementia in Spokane County, he said. Loiacono recalled a 1999 incident in which a woman named Nancy Rockwell died of hypothermia in a Whitman County field after getting lost on her way home from a South Hill health club.

“We don’t want any more Nancy Rockwells,” he said.

As for Robert Harvey, his wife said she’ll do her part to keep him safe.

“From now on I’m going to walk so slowly he could crawl if he wants to,” Garrett-Harvey said.