Project Lifesaver gets 88-year-old dementia patient safely back home

Police in Guelph are crediting Project Lifesaver with safely delivering an 88-year-old dementia patient back to his nursing home on Monday.

The man went missing early that morning, at about 6:15 a.m., from a nursing home near Gordon Street and Clairfields Drive W. in Guelph, police said in a news release on Tuesday.

Once police learned that the elderly man was part of Project Lifesaver and wearing one of their proprietary bracelets, officers were able to use the Project Lifesaver equipment to hone in on his signal and track where the man was and where he was going.

He was found within the hour at Gordon Street and Poppy Drive E. unharmed and well,police said. He was returned to his nursing home.

Project Lifesaver is a public safety non-profit organization that helps law enforcement and first responders locate people with cognitive disorders who are prone to wandering away from their home base.

Those people may have a form of dementia, Down syndrome, on the autism spectrum or even some form of brain damage.

The bracelets they wear emit individualized FM radio signals 24 hours a day, said Guelph police and the radio waves are able to transmit in forested areas and even in more densely populated and built-up urban areas.