When a 6-year-old boy with autism was found dead after he wandered away from his Buckingham County home last month, officials there urged the media to publicize Project Lifesaver, a program that outfits people at risk for wandering with a tracking device that can be used to locate them. A $6,000 grant from the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America is now allowing Albemarle County to expand its PL program.
“It’s all about providing … a little peace of mind that if they do wander, then we can quickly locate them,” says Albemarle County Sheriff Chan Bryant. She says many of the 39 children and adults currently enrolled in Project Lifesaver in Albemarle have autism, Alzheimer’s, or some other form of dementia.
According to the Alzheimer’s Association, six in 10 people living with Alzheimer’s will wander at some point in the progression of their disease. A study published in the journal Pediatrics found that about half of parents whose children have autism reported wandering behavior. That same study found that 65 percent of those incidents involved a close call with traffic. Nearly a quarter involved some risk of drowning.
In the Buckingham tragedy, Landon “Waldy” Raber wandered away around 8pm on Sunday, July 10. A massive search followed, with volunteer fire departments, the Virginia Department of Emergency Management Search and Rescue, and Virginia State Police scouring the area. The search ended in heartbreak when Raber’s remains were discovered in a pond on the family’s property the following day.
Lt. Bo Jamerson with the Buckingham County Sheriff’s Office says another tragedy was averted earlier in the year when a 10-year-old with autism became lost. That child was enrolled in Project Lifesaver, and his parents alerted authorities who located the boy within 20 minutes.
Bryant says her department has received five or six Project Lifesaver call-outs this year, all of which ended with the missing person located safely.
One of those people is Sunita Singh’s 75-year-old father, who suffers from dementia and has repeatedly become disoriented and lost on occasion. A software engineer, Singh tried to keep tabs on her father by providing him with a cell phone that could be tracked. The downside of that method: He made repeated international calls to people he didn’t know, racking up hundreds of dollars in phone bills that she had to dispute. A family doctor introduced her to Project Lifesaver, and she signed up to have her father tracked.
“I’m so glad that we did this,” she says, noting that Project Lifesaver has already located her father multiple times in the past year.
The Alzheimer’s Foundation grant will allow the purchase of more bracelets and transmitters, says Bryant. It costs about $300 per tracker, and the program is free to community members diagnosed with a qualifying condition. For more information, call 972-4001.
Courteney Stuart is the host of “Charlottesville Right Now” on WINA. You can hear interviews with Albemarle County Sheriff Chan Bryant and Lt. Bo Jamerson at wina.com.