Can Tele Care pendent be use to locate a missing person?

.Does anyone know if there is any device which can be used to wake up a telecare pendant? My brother went on holiday to Portugal and disappeared 11 days ago. All normal searches are being conducted. However I noticed on the CCTV images of him on the day he was last seen that he is wearing the telecare pendant his retirement flats try to encourage residents to wear inside their flats. I’m not sure of the brand but I suspect the mechanism is the standard one used in UK. I reckon the range is something between 20 - 50 yards. If he has fallen into dense undergrowth, could a remote device wake it up and either enable speech and/or emit signals to help locate him/rule out an area for searches?

I’m very sorry to hear that your brother is missing. I’m sure this is a very difficult time for your family.

With regard to the Telecare pendant, these come in a number of different models with different features.

The most basic is just a short range device which communicates to its own base station, sort of like a Bluetooth headset paired to that base station. It won’t do anything once it’s outside the range of its own base station and it can’t be used outside the home. So it can’t really be used as a locator device. It’s possible that if the police know the device model and frequency they might have a way of getting the pendant to beep if they are within about 20 m of it, which might help if, for example, he had fallen in a park. But they would have to have the specific equipment to do that.

There are some other models, mostly private commercial brands, which include a GPS locator, and those might definitely be of help, but again you would have to know the specific model and account information. Also, I don’t know what happens if you are in a different country, again that may depend on the specific model.

( I am in the US, but I myself carry a telecare type device which does have GPS location, so my family could use it to locate me if I were missing. But we chose the device for that kind of feature and we do have to pay a monthly fee for it, it’s not the standard issue “panic button” at home device.)

I suggest that if you haven’t already, you let the police handling your brother’s case know about the pendant and have them look into what model it is and what features might be available. There won’t be anything you can just do generically, it would have to be done through that specific account if the features are available.

If your brother carries a smart phone, it’s likely that that will be of just as much use, perhaps even more, in helping to locate him, so in a sense that’s good news as the police are likely already looking into that.

Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s anything we can do in this forum to help specifically regarding this device. I will keep you and your brother in my thoughts and prayers and hope for a positive outcome for you. Please do let us know what happens.

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