Police use Cellphone-tracking technology to find heart transplant patient

Thanks to cellphone-tracking technology –  and a police force that was savvy enough to think of it – a heart transplant patient was located only moments before he was passed up for the operation.

It was Saturday afternoon when the hospital called up the state police in a last-ditch effort to inform John Paul May or his parents of the news: a heart donor was finally found. When a search for the boy or his parents turned up with no results, state police finally contacted Sprint Nextel Corp – a cellular service provider – to locate the cellphone of John’s mother.

This in turn led them to a Slippery Rock University building, where a jazz concert was being held. The authorities immediately stopped the proceedings and announced that they were looking for the boy and his mother, and true enough, John Paul May was in the audience. They wasted no time in escorting John back to the hospital, amidst a shocked audience – and a deafening standing ovation.

“I’ve been in the entertainment business for 30 years and never had such an emotional, shocking event happen at something live,” Steve Hawk, the conductor of the jazz concert being held when the incident occurred, recounts.

Thanks to cellphone-tracking technology –  and a police force that was savvy enough to think of it – a heart transplant patient was located only moments before he was passed up for the operation.

It was Saturday afternoon when the hospital called up the state police in a last-ditch effort to inform John Paul May or his parents of the news: a heart donor was finally found. When a search for the boy or his parents turned up with no results, state police finally contacted Sprint Nextel Corp – a cellular service provider – to locate the cellphone of John’s mother.

This in turn led them to a Slippery Rock University building, where a jazz concert was being held. The authorities immediately stopped the proceedings and announced that they were looking for the boy and his mother, and true enough, John Paul May was in the audience. They wasted no time in escorting John back to the hospital, amidst a shocked audience – and a deafening standing ovation.

“I’ve been in the entertainment business for 30 years and never had such an emotional, shocking event happen at something live,” Steve Hawk, the conductor of the jazz concert being held when the incident occurred, recounts.