‘I’ll be with you for the rest of my life’: Daily automated calls a lifeline for older Delaware adults who live alone

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A 99-year-old woman who lives alone near Wilmington fell and injured herself one morning and could not get up to call 911.

A few hours later, a software program based at New Castle County police headquarters made an automated call to the woman’s home. She didn’t answer that call or follow-up calls by a volunteer who monitors the messages.

The volunteer contacted the woman’s daughter, who hurried to the home and found her mom on the floor. An ambulance took the woman to the hospital, where she was treated and released.

“We were able to get in touch with her daughter and she got out there,” county police Master Cpl. Andrew Daller said. “Who knows what would have happened if we hadn’t?”

The woman’s rescue last month illustrates how the county’s Senior Roll Call Lifeline program aims to avert disaster for older residents who live alone and, in some cases, have disabilities or other health issues that render them homebound.

Daller, who oversees the 30-year-old free service, says about 200 seniors rely on the calls that most receive daily. Should they fail to answer or if something seems amiss when they do, Daller or the volunteer on duty reaches out to the emergency contact to check on their well-being.

Daller said that eight to 10 times a month, an officer is dispatched to the person’s home, often after calls are first made to area hospitals to see if they are being treated there. Usually, they discover that the person is fine and just didn’t pick up the phone, but loved ones and police have made many timely rescues.

Here’s a few of the more dramatic ones:

• One morning in April, officers found an 87-year-old Brandywine Hundred woman who was unable to get up from a chair on her rear porch. She’d been there since the previous afternoon and hadn’t had anything to eat or drink in temperatures that had dropped to about 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
• One day in June, officers found a 94-year-old North Star man lying on his concrete porch floor. He’d fallen around midnight, but couldn’t get up. He was given first aid at the scene, taken to a hospital for evaluation and later thanked police in a voicemail for “saving my life.”
• In June 2021, officers sent to a home in Fairfax found a disoriented 74-year-old man lying face down on his garage floor in stifling heat that surpassed 90 degrees Fahrenheit. He’d fallen the previous afternoon and was trapped in the garage for 19 hours.

“The majority of them pick up the phone and answer or we follow up one time because it was an answering machine and everything’s fine,’’ Daller said.

“But yeah, on a semiregular basis, there’s more to it and we’re having to contact other people and then often enough we have to send police out to just knock on the door and check on them.”

‘What they rely on to make sure everybody knows they’re OK’

The Lifeline program began in 1995, and the basic criteria to qualify for the daily calls is to be 65 or older and live by yourself. Almost all members receive daily robocalls, but some opt for less frequent monitoring.

“They don’t have anybody there that’s with them or checking up on them daily,” Daller said. “So this is what they rely on to make sure everybody knows they’re okay.”

While more than 111,000 of the county’s 582,000 residents are 65 or older, Daller said it’s unknown how many live alone. But he acknowledged more might want to access the Lifeline service.

More information about how to apply or inform someone who could use the program is available on the county police website.

Depending on the senior’s preference, calls go out at 7 a.m., 8 a.m., 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. That gives Daller or a volunteer time each hour to make followup contacts to see if someone might be in distress.

Daller called a handful of members who didn’t answer the automated call that was made while talking on a recent morning with WHYY News. All answered his call and said they were fine.

‘“Good morning. This is Senior Roll Call,” he told one woman while verifying her identity. “I’m just giving you a ring ‘cause the call went to voicemail the first time.”

“Okay,” she replied.

“All right. Have a great day,” Daller said.

“OK, you too,” she said.

“Take care,” Daller said before ending the call.

‘You’ve got a lot of people who live by themselves’

Jay Baylor, who lives alone in the New Castle area south of Wilmington, said he loves being in the program, just in case he has a medical issue.

Baylor, who is 75, walks 3 miles a day and has relatively minor health concerns — arthritis in his back and slightly elevated blood pressure. He says the calls give him peace of mind that someone will come if he has an incident. His next-door neighbor is his emergency contact.

The retired postal police officer moved to Delaware from Newark, New Jersey, about 20 years ago. He still drives and is active in his church, but has no local relatives “to check on me, so this is a good way to check to see if I’m still alive,” Baylor said.

Baylor said he communicates regularly with a niece who lives in New Jersey, sharing text messages every morning.

“If something happened to me, she wouldn’t be able to get in touch with me. So this is another way,” he said. “You’ve got a lot of people who live by themselves. And some of them, like me, don’t have family members who live around them. I have church family but it’s not like your family family.”

Daller said he enjoys listening to the calls to Baylor, who always has a kind word for the automated voice.

“If it’s raining, he says, ‘Stay dry.’ Or if it’s hot, he says, ‘Stay cool.’ And he always says ‘thank you,’” Daller said.

Baylor thanked Daller personally while talking with WHYY News via speakerphone from the Lifeline office.

“I love this program and I’m glad my neighbor told me about it and I’ll be with you for the rest of my life, I guess,” Baylor told the cop.

“Well, we look forward to your kind words in the morning,” Daller replied,

“Yeah, you’re people are nice,” Baylor said with a chuckle. “I appreciate you. I don’t take you for granted and God bless all of you.”