Ottawa police credit a phone-calling system for saving the life of an elderly man who had wandered away from his home last month.

That system, which is free for law enforcement agencies across the country, isn’t in use in Douglas County. But local law enforcement officials said having such a system in place could come in handy when people go missing.

About 7 p.m. Feb. 19, an Ottawa woman reported that her 80-year-old husband, who has Alzheimer’s disease, had been missing for about an hour.

To assist in the search, Ottawa police officer A.J. Schmidt contacted a national nonprofit program known as A Child Is Missing. Used in missing-persons cases for children, Alzheimer’s patients and those with mental disabilities, the program makes mass phone calls to alert neighbors about a missing person.

In the Ottawa case, calls went out to residents in a two-mile radius and provided details about what the man was wearing and when he last was seen.

Shortly after the calls went out, neighbors began arriving at the man’s home to assist in the search.

One of the first teams in the field found the man in a creek about a half-mile from his home. The man was conscious and alert but starting to suffer from hypothermia.

“Without the use of A Child Is Missing network and the reverse call, we wouldn’t have found him as quickly as we did,” Ottawa Police Lt. Adam Weingartner said. “Certainly the outcome could have been much different if we went longer.”

By the time the man was found, the police had 40 people searching and another 20 people waiting for assignments.

This was the first successful recovery the Ottawa police had while using the phone system. It’s also one of 819 safe recoveries across the country connected with A Child Is Missing program.

How it works

The program began 14 years ago in Florida. In 2006, it became available to Kansas law enforcement agencies.

So far, more than 100 Kansas law enforcement agencies have signed up, which just requires an agency to provide a letter of participation and training.

No software programs or extra phone lines are needed, said Claudia Corrigan, vice president of A Child is Missing.

The mass phone calls, Corrigan said, are the equivalent of squad cars coming into a neighborhood, officers jumping out of them and starting to knock on doors.

“We are able to make a thousand calls in less than a minute,” Corrigan said. “It is huge.”

Along with using a data base of landline phone numbers, resident can go online — to achildismissing.org — where they can enter cell phone numbers, which will be called when someone near the listed address goes missing.

Not used in Lawrence

While both the Lawrence Police Department and Douglas County Sheriff’s Office said they have plans in place to help in missing person searches, neither is connected to the network.

Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical Chief Mark Bradford said a few years ago he made a request to Douglas County commissioners to purchase a system that would do reverse calls. It was turned down.

The school district has a reverse call system in place to alert parents about school closings and meetings, Bradford said.

Thanks to a partnership with the Lawrence Pilot Club, the sheriff’s office is participating in a program called Project Lifesaver. To help locate people who are at a high risk of wandering, such as those with Alzheimer’s, dementia, autism and Down syndrome, a small radio transmitter is attached to a bracelet that the person would wear.

The sheriff’s office is trained on how to use equipment that picks up the transmitter’s signal. Of course, for the program to work, the person has to be wearing the bracelet.

To get the word out on a missing person, Lawrence Police Department relies on media outlets, their websites and a city distribution list that residents can sign up for to receive e-mails on city events.

A Child Is Missing network might be something the city should consider, Sgt. Matt Sarna noted in an e-mail.

“Any tool that we could use to locate missing children, individuals with disabilities or the elderly can do nothing but benefit the community as a whole and assist the officers investigating,” he wrote.