An illustrative scenario.
Frank is 82. Lives in the same house he and his wife Marion bought in 1981. Marion passed away in 2017. He's been there alone since.
He doesn't go to the senior centre — he says it's "for old people." He gardens, walks the dog, reads, fixes things that probably don't need fixing. His daughter Sarah lives in Calgary and visits twice a year. They talk on the phone Sundays.
Frank is fine. He knows he's fine. The problem is that the kids don't always know he's fine.
Sarah called one Sunday and didn't reach him — he was at the hardware store. She called his son Mike, in Hamilton. Mike called Bob, the neighbour. Bob came over and found Frank pulling into the driveway with a new bag of potting soil.
It was funny in retrospect. Frank watched Sarah's face on the video call afterwards. She'd been scared. He hadn't expected that.
He thought about it for a week. He doesn't want a camera in his kitchen. He's not going to wear a pendant — he's seen those on other people and he is not other people.
A friend at his coffee group mentioned MyDailyCheck. Frank went home and looked it up.
Frank set it up himself. He's annoyed by people who assume he can't.
He picked 7:30 AM because he's always up by 7. He picked the "Efficient" personality because he doesn't want chitchat first thing in the morning.
He added Sarah, Mike, and Bob to the contact tree, in that order. He set a 45-minute escalation window — enough that he can take a long bathroom break or finish reading the paper without anything triggering.
He didn't tell Sarah he'd done it. He just did it.
The phone rings at 7:30. He picks up. "Good morning. Daily check-in. Press 1 if you're okay." He presses 1. He hangs up. About eight seconds.
He has his coffee. He reads the paper. The day starts.
Sarah hasn't called him scared in eight months. She still calls Sundays.
He told Bob about it at the diner once. Bob signed up the next week.
“It's a small good morning. I press 1. I have my coffee. Nobody worries about me today.”
— Frank, 82 (illustrative)
If you'd rather stay in the home you've built — without cameras, without a bracelet, without your kids checking on you four times a day — MyDailyCheck was built for exactly that. You sign up. You set the time. You keep your life.
More for seniors →No. I did it myself. I'm tired of them worrying about nothing.
The system retries, then sends a text, then loops in the kids. I haven't had to find out because I haven't missed one. And if I did, I'd rather they know than not.
No. You press 1. That's the whole interaction. Eight seconds, give or take.
Vacation mode. I tell the app I'm away. No calls until I'm back. Nobody panics.
First check-in goes out tomorrow morning, at the time you choose.