Raising an autistic child presents parents with unique challenges, but few make a mother’s heart race like when an autistic child is discovered missing.

Lisa and Randy Lumley are all too aware of that feeling as their 8-year-old autistic child, Luke, has wandered away in the past.

“It is not real often, but when he wandered away from his grandparents’ house in the middle of the night, we knew we had to do something,” Lisa Lumley said.

The Lumleys began looking into tracking devices and found Project Lifesaver, which pairs caregivers with emergency personnel and uses tracking devices when a patient is missing. The Lumleys looked into ways to bring the project to the area, only to find out the process was under way by county staff.

“Too many times in the past, we’ve had people missing — whether children or adults — and by the time we got our resources prepared, a lot of time had passed,” Nash County Sheriff Dick Jenkins said.

In 2009, emergency search and rescue teams conducted eight searches in Nash County.

“Those active searches took from 10 minutes to 10 hours with an average of eight hours,” Deputy Fire Marshal Chris Bissette said.

Project Lifesaver is expected to improve the search time by using a transmitter bracelet that emits a tracking signal when activated.

Nash County Senior Center Director Stacie Shatzer said Project Lifesaver has been used in more then 2,100 searches nationally with an average search time of 30 minutes.

Bissette said county personnel has spent several months training on the equipment.

Although Project Lifesaver won’t be available to the public until January, organizers from Emergency Management, Nash County Sheriff’s Office and the Senior Center unveiled the program Monday.

“I see this as such as great supplemental tool to the great search and rescue efforts already in place,” Emergency Services Director Brian Brantley said. “I hope we don’t need it, but we will be well prepared if the situation comes up.”

Bissette said officials are estimating 35 to 50 clients will enroll in the project. He said autistic and Alzheimer’s patients will be the primary users.

Project Lifesaver requires a variety of equipment that isn’t cheap and has been largely funded through donations. The DeLeon Carter Foundation donated $2,400 and the Belcher Lund Co. of Greenville donated $300. The Lumley’s foundation, the Luke Lumley Exceptional Children’s Charity Inc., also donated $7,500 to help get the program started.

Eligible users can be a part of the program for $10 a month. To learn more, call 459-1365.

“It doesn’t matter how much the program costs,” Jenkins said. “If it saves one person, it is worth it.”

Any child or adult who lives in Nash County, has a medically diagnosed cognitive impairment that makes them prone to wander, has wandered away from a caregiver in the past, has a caregiver who will check the transmitter’s battery everyday and a client who will wear the bracelet at all times will be eligible for Project Lifesaver at a $10 a month cost.

“When we started the charity, we wanted to do something for autism, but we didn’t want to do something nationally where we would never see the money in Nash County,” Randy Lumley said. “We wanted to be able to feel it work. We’ve donated $20,000 to the Nash-Rocky Mount School System Exceptional Children’s program in two years, and now we are helping get this program off to a good start.”

Lisa Lumley said her son will be enrolled as soon as possible.

“I hope we never have to use it, but I believe this will help if he does get lost,” she said. “And it might help somebody else, too.”