Patent ID: 8106820

Claim:
Personal locating apparatus comprising: a housing; a plurality of buttons Including an on/off button for turning the apparatus on and off, and a plurality of selectable buttons, that are selectable to select and deselect one of a predetermined number of operational modes of the apparatus; a global positioning system (GPS) receiver for processing GPS signals received from GPS satellites to generate location data indicative of the location of the apparatus; a satellite transmitter coupled to the processor for transmitting a personal location signal including the location data and the selected operational mode signal of a number of different operational mode signals of the apparatus to a remote location via one or more communication satellites, wherein the remote location is configured to create and forward a corresponding message to one or more designated locations based upon the selected operational mode; a processor coupled to the GPS receiver and the satellite transmitter that is programmed to respond to the buttons that are selected to generate the selected operational mode signal, process the location signals from the GPS receiver and the selected operational mode signal to generate the personal location signal for transmission to the remote location, and for transmitting the personal location signal to the remote location via the one or more communication satellites, wherein said remote location is configured to generate the corresponding message from the location data and the selected operational mode and forward the corresponding message to recipients selected from a list of designated recipients associated with the selected operational mode.