A small radio tracker that fits on a beaded necklace or a wristband is quietly helping New Zealand families keep their most vulnerable loved ones safe, and demand for it is climbing fast.
WanderSearch, a charitable trust that supplies the devices to people at risk of going missing, says it has seen a sharp rise in interest over the past six months. The trust told RNZ that requests in the Canterbury region alone had jumped 30 percent, driven by an ageing population and a run of high-profile cases in which elderly people got lost in the cold.
The stakes are easy to understand. Earlier this year an 81-year-old Christchurch woman was found freezing cold and lying in grass after going missing for four days. A year earlier, 79-year-old Elizabeth Nicholls was found dead at an empty section in the city after going missing for almost three weeks. Cases like those are exactly what the trust is trying to prevent.
The WanderSearch device is deliberately simple. It is a small unit that emits a unique radio frequency, and it can be worn as a pendant, clipped to a belt or tucked into a wristband. It does not rely on a mobile phone signal or a data plan. If the wearer goes missing, police and trained search and rescue volunteers use a directional receiver to home in on that frequency and find the person quickly.
One of the youngest people using a device is four-year-old Tui, the daughter of Christchurch mother Brittney Smith-Guerin. Tui has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, is largely non-verbal and has global developmental delay, which means she takes longer than other children to reach certain developmental milestones. She also loves to run.
“Tui has no sense of danger, she will run at any given opportunity,” Smith-Guerin said. “When we go outside she has to be in a pushchair or we can’t really go anywhere. She is an eloper. Whether here at home, at pre-school or out and about, she is always taking the opportunity to try and run.”
Smith-Guerin heard about the service from another parent of a child with autism. Since March, Tui has worn her device in the form of a necklace decorated at home with pretty beads. At the family home, the front door is kept bolted and deadlocked so Tui cannot slip out unnoticed. The prospect of her starting school later this year is daunting, but her mother says the device has given the family a measure of reassurance.
“The thought of her being at a primary school with however many other children and door handles that she can just reach and open, it’s just that extra security that if she leaves the premises, at home, or school or wherever that she is found faster,” Smith-Guerin said.
“She will take the opportunity potentially to run in front of a car, or find a body of water, or not answer to her name if people are out looking for her. She will actively hide. So having that device where they can actually locate her quicker makes me feel a whole lot safer.”
WanderSearch’s Canterbury programme manager, Emma Parker, said about 170 people in the region were now using a device, spanning a wide range of ages and conditions.
“We work with a wide range of ages and a wide range of conditions, dementia, neurodivergent, intellectual disability, but really anybody with a risk of going missing we could supply a device to,” Parker said.
She said the 30 percent rise in requests over the last six months was likely linked to growing rates of dementia, but she also suspected the recent cases of elderly people getting lost had pushed worried families to get in touch. Each year, about 20 to 30 searches for people carrying the devices are referred to police in Canterbury.
For Parker, the point of the technology is not surveillance but freedom. “The idea with a device such as WanderSearch is that it will reduce any search and rescue operation for the individual, and it is about reducing carer stress as well,” she said. “And maintaining independence for the individual. They want to be able to be as active as possible in their community for as long as possible and with the people they love.”
Canterbury’s acting search and rescue coordinator, detective Zeb Harland, said police use a directional receiver to pick up the unique frequency assigned to each device. He likened it to the tracking scenes in films, with a slow beep when searchers are far away that quickens as they close in.
“It is directional, so if you think someone is in a certain direction you can simply test by pushing the (receiving) device either side slightly,” Harland said. “And it can get right down to if you are on a street, you stand in front of a house, and one house might have a stronger signal and another next door has a weaker signal. So you can narrow it down quite close.”
The trust is funded through a mix of organisations including Lotto, the Gaming Trust and Rata, though Parker said more stable funding would help. Volunteers are also central to how it works. They visit every person with a device every six months to check it, change the battery and update the trust, and more volunteers are being sought in Canterbury.
People need to meet certain criteria to qualify for a device, but Parker encouraged anyone who thought it might help a family member to get in touch. As New Zealand’s population ages and awareness spreads by word of mouth, it is a quiet piece of technology that is giving families back a little peace of mind.
Has a device like this helped your family, or do you volunteer for a search and rescue service in your area? Tell us your experience in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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