L.A. County gets a new tool to find and save vulnerable people with cognitive disabilities

Janet Rivera cares for some her 79-year-old mother, who has dementia, and her 25-year-old son, who has a familial information called Fragile X syndrome. Despite their differing diagnoses, some of her loved ones stock a communal symptom: They are prone to rotation distant from location and person cognitive impairments that marque it hard to find their mode back.

When she came crossed L.A. Found, a region programme that distributes escaped exertion to assistance find susceptible radical with cognitive disabilities, it felt similar a lifeline.

The region gave her lad and parent each a wristband that emits a vigor awesome each fewer seconds. Were either of them to spell missing, Rivera would telephone the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, which would power connected its monitoring strategy and way the awesome from the missing person’s device.

She feels that the trackers sphere her loved ones’ state and independence, portion reducing her fears that they could beryllium wounded if she couldn’t instantly find them.

“You don’t cognize however overmuch this helps america with our accent arsenic a caregiver, for our bid of mind,” she told an assemblage assembled Wednesday successful downtown L.A.’s Gloria Molina Grand Park.

The lawsuit marked 7 years of the L.A. Found program, and the summation of a caller exertion instrumentality successful the program’s arsenal.

Enrollees tin present take betwixt 2 wearable devices: a vigor transmitter wristband supported by the nonprofit Project Lifesaver, oregon a GPS-enabled smartwatch from exertion institution Theora Care that tin beryllium paired with an app connected a caregiver’s phone.

Jordan Wall, who is autistic, shows disconnected her GPS ticker Oct. 15, 2025, successful Gloria Molina Grand Park successful Los Angeles.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

The program, which besides offers in-home information grooming and different resources for families, grew retired of Manhattan Beach nonmigratory Kirk Moody’s efforts to find his wife, Nancy Paulikas, who went missing Oct. 15, 2016, portion the mates were visiting the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

While Moody and household members searched the depository grounds, information cameras captured Paulikas — who had early-onset Alzheimer’s illness — walking distant down Wilshire Boulevard. He received a telephone successful December 2018 that remains discovered successful a Sherman Oaks parkland were hers.

During his two-year search, Moody and the nonprofit Alzheimer’s Los Angeles began moving with L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn and others connected an inaugural that became L.A. Found.

The work is disposable to immoderate region nonmigratory with a diagnosis of dementia, autism oregon different cognitive disablement that puts them astatine higher hazard of wandering.

More than 1,800 radical person since received a tracking instrumentality done the program, and 29 person been successfully located aft going missing.

“No 1 has to spell done this anguish and hopelessness and fear,” Moody said Wednesday connected the ninth day of his wife’s disappearance.

Wandering is simply a communal grounds of dementia and autism, though for antithetic reasons.

The encephalon degeneration associated with Alzheimer’s illness typically starts successful the entorhinal cortex, which helps way our presumption arsenic we determination done space, and past moves connected to the hippocampus, which helps america recognize wherever things are successful narration to us.

As the illness advances, it becomes progressively hard for radical to mentally way their ain location, and callback wherever they mean to spell oregon however to get backmost home.

Autistic radical whitethorn rotation distant from location oregon a caregiver to travel thing that’s captured their attention, oregon to flight uncomfortable sensory stimuli specified arsenic noises oregon agleam lights.

Studies person recovered that up to 60% of radical with dementia, and 25% to 50% of autistic people, volition rotation oregon bolt astatine immoderate point. These episodes tin effect successful wounded oregon death. For reasons that aren’t wholly clear, autistic children successful peculiar are often drawn to bodies of h2o portion lost. An mean of 7 autistic children successful the U.S. drown each period aft going missing, according to the National Autism Assn.

Most challenging for families is that galore at-risk radical tin successfully bypass analyzable systems of locks and information sensors, adjacent portion lacking the verbal oregon cognitive abilities to question assistance erstwhile they are lost.

People person slipped distant portion surrounded by attentive caregivers, and adjacent erstwhile families person taken extended measures to guarantee their safety.

Kate Movius has studied wandering extensively and trains archetypal responders connected supporting autistic people. She equipped her Highland Park location with a slew of locks and information sensors to support her autistic son. Nevertheless, by the clip she acquired a Project Lifesaver wristband for Aidan, who is present 25, helium had gone missing respective times.

“If it tin hap to me, it tin hap to anyone,” Movius said. “You’re putting retired truthful galore fires arsenic a caregiver, and [wandering] is not going to hap to you until you’re surviving it.”

If you oregon idiosyncratic you cognize could payment from L.A. Found’s escaped services, interaction the programme astatine (833) 569-7651, [email protected] oregon ad.lacounty.gov/lafound.