Things have been quite busy since we received our US Coast Guard Approval, so I apologize for the time it took to respond. My partners and I each received calls and emails from friends who watched the segment of American Inventor showing the young man with the water rescue tool. Some who called us were concerned for us that our patent was being infringed; others just wanted us to check it out. I did find an airing, which I recorded and later watched with interest.
What I saw took me back to a point nearly 10 years ago, when our device was in just about as crude a stage of development. I discovered back then that many people cannot see the full potential of a device in the early stages of development and that can often mean the support needed to make further refinements is very hard to come by. Just to refine his working prototype to that stage this young man must have already put many hours of thought and effort into his device.

While what I observed gave me no reason for concern from a business perspective, it left me quite saddened as a fellow entrepreneur and innovator to see how that young man was treated on the show. As anyone who’s ever dared such an effort knows, their dreams are often met with criticism, skepticism and lack of support from corners where you would most expect assistance. If after encountering these early obstacles, you’re not completely discouraged and decide to stay the course and see support coming your way, it’s an enormous boost. But, if as this show turned out to be, it’s a canard that pulls the rug out from under you, that’s especially devastating. Misleading this poor fellow into thinking there was any real hope there and then in front of countless TV viewers treating him in such a demeaning manner, was totally inappropriate and hopefully to many viewers, it didn’t make for good television.

One of the show’s panel experts touted his having fallen into icy waters as if it were some validation of his expertise. He then went on to claim that there were many of these disc-like devices and inferred that they were “ALL” less than worthwhile.

Having spent nearly three decades in professional rescue and done my share of pulling guys like him out of icy waters, we have our own affectionate name for these guys, the ones who keep rescue people gainfully employed and it’s not “Expert”. I just wished the show’s producers could have done a bit more research/due diligence before airing such blatantly ignorant and damaging claims about this whole class of technology.

As a retired rescue professional and inventor, I’m privileged to head up a team of rescue pro’s, all across the country which developed one of those disc-like devices now called the Personal Retriever™. This effort has required my team of professionals and engineers to make a 10 year unpaid commitment to see this device developed to this stage, because we know how many lives we could save if we succeed.

In recent years the Retriever has made national news for saving lives. It now holds two US patents. It has won a prestigious international Innovation awards. Several years ago some of the world’s foremost maritime/rescue experts began supporting it and recently it became the first innovative, non-conforming throwable rescue device in decades to receive US Coast Guard Approval. After seeing my team overcome such hurdles and finally begin to get traction against the overly skeptical minds of many only to hear your pseudo-expert make such an ignorant unfounded claim against this entire class of technology on your show was, to put it politely, frustrating.

Unfortunately we’re still living in a country that for decades has been losing 3,000 to 4,000 US citizens each year to drowning. World wide we’ve been losing 450,000 to 500,000 lives are each year to drowning. Many drown in 20-60 seconds, the majority of these are not occurring at guarded beaches, so until we develop a safer, more effective response device to enable those (often untrained citizens) on scene to assist, we, the professionals will not have sufficient time to arrive and make these rescues.

To those of us who’ve zipped the body bags and looked into the eyes of grieving families, only to now hear our efforts to do for drowning what CPR has done for Cardiac Arrest, be undermined for the sake of entertainment or to see this young man’s attempt to find a solution to such a serious problem treated so inanely on your show, was all the motivation our group needed. We have begun an effort to see if we can get a news service or one of your competitors to set the record straight. Or as Paul Harvey used to do, was tell “The rest of the story”.
For more information go to www.life-safer.com.

Respectfully,

P.K. Driscoll
Master Chief Bos’n,
U. S. Coast Guard, (Ret)

PS: Judging from the Blog I’m reading, this show should have had several categories. They could have ranged from serious inventions on to the weird and wacky. The show’s producers should have been up front with contestants about which category they see them fitting into and what to expect. If that had been done perhaps a significant segment of the viewing public might have had far less problems with the show’s format. It might not be a turn-off to as many people who, like myself, do not enjoy entertainment when it is at the expense of others. I still remember the backlash when that dating show’s setup lead to a young man’s homicide. That’s entertainment?