SEQUIM – A serious story with a happy ending played out on Sunday near Sequim that brings to light a life-saving program in our area called, fittingly, Project Lifesaver.
At about 3:30 in the afternoon Juanita Commeree called the Sheriff’s Office to report that her husband Clifford had walked away from their home on Finn Hall Road.
Clifford has diagnosed Alzheimer’s and is a Project Lifesaver client. He wears a bracelet which emits a specific radio frequency assigned to him. Sergeant Bundy and Deputy Federline responded to the call with specialized tracking equipment that guided them to Clifford’s location about a quarter mile away.
A grateful Juanita Commeree said she’d like everyone to know what a great program this is, so we asked the Sheriff’s Volunteer Coordinator Lorraine Shore to tell us a little more about Project Lifesaver.
“Project Lifesaver International is the program started for specifically finding people who wander due to disorders such as Alzheimer’s or dementia, or children with autism or Down syndrome. It’s for law enforcement use only, and the program is funded from a foundation in Sequim. It’s wonderful. The Guerin Foundation funded this program to allow us to bring it to the Peninsula and provides the equipment and training necessary. And the wonderful part about being funded by the foundation is it’s free to those that need it, and that’s great because the transmitters themselves are $300, you know the cost a tremendous amount if we didn’t have the funding that we do.
Shore says the time it takes to find someone using this equipment is typically under 30 minutes.
Find out more about Project Lifesaver by clicking on the link below:
http://www.clallam.net/sheriff/projectlifesaver.html
Above: Some of the equipment used by law enforcement to find Clifford Commeree.