A new service for senior citizens may give their families some peace of mind.

Project Life Saver, a locator service for wandering Camarillo seniors suffering from dementia, was unveiled before officials at the Camarillo Boys & Girls Club Tuesday.

"I think this is going to be wonderful," Mayor Charlotte Craven said.

"You can't have enough eyes and ears out there," Camarillo Police Capt. Monica McGrath said.

For a start up and monthly fee, seniors can enroll in the Project Life Saver program. They wear a wrist band that emits an individually-assigned frequency registered with the police department.

If a 911 call comes in for a missing Project Life Saver client, Camarillo police and its auxiliary group Citizens Patrol respond and begin searching the area where the person was last seen. The volunteer patrol, specially trained by Project Life Saver International, uses directional antennas to fix onto the frequency signal of the missing senior.

Finding a missing person is an arduous effort that burns up valuable search and rescue resources, said Gene Saunders, founder of Project Life Saver International and a former police captain. Project Life Saver has helped find 1,900 clients without any reported injuries or deaths, he said.

The average recovery time is less than 30 minutes, the company's website states.

Project Life Saver can be found in 45 U.S. states, Canada and Australia, he said.

It's taken two years and the combined efforts of the sheriff-run Camarillo Police Department, Senior Concerns, the Alzheimer's Association and the county's four Lions clubs—Channel Islands, Downtown Ventura, Oxnard Noontime and CamarilloSomisPleasant Valley—to bring Project Life Saver to Camarillo, the first city in Ventura County to have the program.

The group said they hope the program will spread to all Ventura County cities.

"The Lions clubs have been phenomenal—they've been the reason this exists today," said Carol Freeman, president of Senior Concerns in Thousand Oaks, who will screen and sign up prospective clients in the East County area. The Alzheimer's Association in Camarillo will interview clients in the West County.

Freeman said she hopes Thousand Oaks is the next city to implement Project Life Saver.

Mike Brown of the CamarilloSomisPleasant Valley Lions spearheaded the effort to establish Project Life Saver in Camarillo.

"I think the most rewarding (thing) is when we find that first client," Brown said.

The four Lions clubs donated about $10,000 and the city of Camarillo a $5,000 grant to buy the tracking equipment and training needed to launch the program.

For information on Project Life Saver, call the Alzheimer's Association at (805) 485-5597, Senior Concerns at (805) 497-0159, or the Camarillo Police Department at (805) 388-5100.