Tool to track patients who wander

Free devices from county are a boon for those with cognition issues, their caregivers.

- BY CORINNE PURTILL

ALLEN J. SCHABEN Los Angeles Times

JORDAN WALL of Chatsworth, who is autistic, shows off her new GPS watch.

Janet Rivera cares for both her 79-year-old mother, who has dementia, and her 25-year-old son, who has a genetic condition called Fragile X syndrome. Despite their differing diagnoses, both of her loved ones share a common symptom: They are prone to wander away from home and have cognitive impairments that make it hard to find their way back.

When she came across L.A. Found, a county program that distributes free technology to help locate vulnerable people with cognitive disabilities, it felt like a lifeline.

The county gave her son and mother each a wristband that emits a radio signal every few seconds. Were either of them to go missing, Rivera would call the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, which would switch on its monitoring system and track the signal from the missing person's device.

She feels that the trackers preserve her loved ones' freedom and independence, while reducing her fears that they could be hurt if she couldn't immediately find them.

"You don't know how much this helps us with our stress as a caregiver, for our peace of mind," she told an audience assembled Wednesday in downtown L.A.'s Gloria Molina Grand Park.

The event marked seven years of the L.A. Found program, and the addition of a new technology tool in the program's arsenal.