Let's hear it for John King, tinkerer

I volunteer at a homeless shelter, where many of our guests are coping with substance abuse problems. Folks sometimes pass out. And sometimes they pass out because of the drugs that are in their system. Sometimes they need a spray of Narcan to revive. I'm not trained to administer it - all/most staff members are - but I know where the Narcan is located, and I've seen it given. Sometimes I'm around when a guest comes out of the restroom to report that someone has collapsed in there. And I know who to alert.

But, thanks to John King, a local electrician who's a lifelong tinkerer, folks collapsing in bathrooms don't have to go unnoticed until someone stumbles in on them.

The 63-year-old electrician has become the nation’s go-to expert on motion-sensor technology that can detect when a person has overdosed on drugs and has stopped moving in a closed space. Based on King’s records, more than 3,500 people have been resuscitated from potentially deadly overdoses using motion-sensor systems that he designed and helped install in scores of health facilities across the country, from Hyannis to Los Angeles.

“It’s like a mini-time machine,” King said while doing a routine maintenance check on one of his systems. “It gives you the opportunity to roll back the clock a few minutes and save someone’s life.” (Source: Boston Globe)

King's systems use a ombination of sensors that detect body movements, tracking them from when someone goes into a room to when they leave. If there's no movement detected for a set period, "an alarm goes off and an emergency medical team can respond."

The first of King's systems was installed in Boston seven years ago. His interest stemmed from a routine job as an electrician at a clinic run by Boston Health Care for the Homeless. He was just finishing up:

...when a facility administrator pulled him aside and asked if he knew of a way to wire the bathrooms to detect overdoses, which were happening at a rate of five

per week at the clinic, King said.

King poured himself into the project. He outfitted the basement of his Andover home with motion sensor devices and electrical relay circuits, equipment that he had once used on alarm systems he installed in banks. Then he talked to doctors, nurses and custodians to understand what happens to a person who overdoses, even acting out the experience in his basement worksite.

(In case you're wondering, there's no visual surveillance involved here. People still have privacy in restrooms. It's just that their movements are detected.)

Since his first installation in 2016, demand for King's systems has grown. (He has an LLC set up, Life Saver Alert, where you can learn more about his approach and product.)

Demand has grown as has, unfortunately, the number of overdose deaths. Thanks in large part fentanyl, in 2022, Massachusetts recorded well over two thousand fatal overdoses, "more than triple the number from a decade ago."

One of those 2022 fatal OD's was a fellow I knew through my volunteer work. He was a very interesting, sweet and almost always out of it older guy who always wore a big knit Jamaican-rasta cap. Most days, he signed up to take a shower - this is my department - and most days he shambled off without taking one. I'd see him panhandling at the Park Street T station and I'd give him a few bucks to get on the train. 

He had just gotten housing in one of the 56 SRO (single room occupancy) units that my shelter runs in our main building, and we were all rejoicing that he'd be out of the elements. We're always thrilled when someone finds housing, especially when it's one of our older guests, or one of the women who come through our doors (they are a lot more vulnerable on the streets). We were especially delighted for C, who was a universal favorite.

And we were universally saddened to learn that, shortly after he got housing, he also got his hands on some fentanyl-laced weed, which killed him. 

I think he died in his room, and not in one of the communal bathrooms that the residents of our SRO's share. Still, to think that lives are saved when bathrooms are equipped with a King monitoring system makes me glad. (My shelter's clinic is run by Boston Health Care for the Homeless, but I don't know if we have any of these systems installed. The men's room on the floor where I do my thing is not equipped with one, nor is the lone private toilet we have for women. The women's toilet is right next to the counter in the Resource Center, which I help staff, and we always keep an eye on who's going in and out and checking when someone is in there for a while. I don't think we've ever had an OD in the women's toilet. We're more likely to have incidents like someone stuffing hundreds of paper towels down the toilet, or leaving a major horrendous mess. One time, we pounded on the door after someone had been in there for way too long, and when she left we realized she'd been in there smoking crack. It happens.)

But there may be Life Save Alert systems elsewhere at St. Francis House. I hope so, as they save lives. (It's estimated that King's systems have been responsible for saving more than 3,000 of them.)

The systems are not, of course, failsafe. 

False alarms are inevitable. In homeless shelters, King noted, it’s common for people to be so exhausted when they come in from the elements that they fall asleep in restrooms — setting off the alarms. Other times, people pass out from drinking alcohol or simply sit motionless on the toilet for so long, reading or watching their phones, that the sensors fail to pick up movement, King said.

But, as I said, these systems save lives. As far as John King knows, no one has died after triggering one of his alarms.

I hope King sells a lot more of his systems. I hope he's patented his technology. I hope that he can scale up. I hope he makes a ton of money.

Bravo, John King, tinkerer. The world could use a lot more of you!