The SAFER system costs $260 to buy the transmitter plus $8 a month to cover battery changes. The organization also offers options that sound alarms whenever a person wearing the transmitter leaves a prescribed area. For more information, go to www.safermn.net.
By James Warden
Three years ago in March, Mario Cortolezzis learned that his son, Dante, had wandered away from school. The danger was immediately obvious.
Dante has autism and, like others with the condition, couldn't always identify what might hurt him.
He ventured to Lake Waconia and was eventually found knee deep in water that was still mostly covered with a thin crust of ice.
"As a parent, that was the most tragic day of my life," Cortolezzis said.
Dante, who's now 6, was found after about an hour and survived the ordeal without harm, but the incident scared Cortolezzis enough to start looking for a way to keep tabs on loved ones with special needs.
He eventually worked with two Carver County deputies to co-found the nonprofit Minnesota SAFER that does just that.
Plymouth became the latest city to embrace Cortolezzis' idea when council members voted July 28 to allow the Police Department to participate in the program - which now covers about 10 cities in Hennepin County and all of Carver County, he said.
Cortolezzis approached the department about participating after a resident signed up, said Plymouth Police Capt. Jeff Swiatkiewicz, the department's patrol captain and the person overseeing the city's SAFER initiative.
SAFER, which stands for Search and Find Emergency Responders, aims specifically to help autistic children, seniors with Alzheimer's and other vulnerable residents at risk of wandering off. The department agreed to sign on, in part, because of that narrow focus, he said.
Plymouth already had been pushing to increase its ability to find missing children, Swiatkiewicz said.
Officers and supervisors have received extensive training from The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
The new program should augment those capabilities when it comes on line this fall. While Swiatkiewicz
hasn't seen too many reports of vulnerable residents wandering off in his career, he said it can be quite difficult to find them when it does happen.
"[SAFER] is going to kind of steer us in the right direction," he said. "Someone would have to get quite a ways away before we got no signal."
The centerpiece of the program is a watch-like device that members wear around their wrist 24 hours a day.
The device broadcasts a radio signal that helps searchers hone in on their position by listening for an increasingly loud tone in much the same way biologists track animals tagged with radio transmitters.
GPS is not used because it doesn't always work in brick buildings and other obstructed areas, Swiatkiewicz said.
Families have their own tracking devices that allow them to track lost loved ones from up to a mile away. But the police department will buy a $5,500 tracking device that allows searchers to find them from as far away as two miles on the ground and five or six miles away in the air.
The Plymouth Crime and Fire Prevention Fund provided an initial donation of $500 and will continue to provide additional funds as they become available.
The department already has the critical information it needs to start looking because SAFER manages the administrative tasks, including collecting key personal details and forwarding them to police whenever someone signs up, Swiatkiewicz said.
Families just need to let the dispatchers know that the missing person is registered with SAFER for officers to start the search. They'll grab the necessary equipment and start honing in on the signal.
Cortolezzis has big plans for SAFER. He's already talking with other Minnesota counties and plans to begin by expanding it throughout the state. In the end, though, he's just trying to keep others from enduring the same fears that he once faced.
"It's going to give their caregivers such a peace of mind," he said.
