Financial Advisor Develops Safety Alarm App for iPhone

After her husband passed away a decade ago, Jill Campbell said she began to grow nervous. Walks from her Sun Valley office to her car in a dark parking lot, grew increasingly frightening. The long-time financial advisor thought: My car has an alarm, my home has an alarm, but I don’t. No longer, she says. Campbell rolled out her latest safety app, OnWatch, at a White House event last month with Vice President Joe Biden and Attorney General Eric Holder. OnWatch and another app were the winners of the Obama Administration’s Apps Against Abuse Technology Challenge. “Just even to be considered in this space, it just blows my mind,” said Campbell, a 67-year-old grandmother and financial advisor. She said she sees OnWatch as helping to combat a problem of sexual assault on college campuses by giving women an extra tool to alert authorities or friends. The OnWatch app is specifically designed for college students — who receive a 90-day free trial with an .edu email address. A 30-day trial is available to everyone else. The new GPS-enabled app, which is available on iPhones and soon on Android, has six different modes. With a few taps, the user can dial 911 directly, call campus police, and send a customized message to friends — complete with a GPS location — to signal arrival at a destination. Another mode allows users to set a timer in a vulnerable situation. When the timer runs out and the user does not punch in a code, friends are alerted through a message and GPS location. Last year, Sun Valley-based WatchMe 911 Inc. launched its first app, a similar version geared toward working woman. Campbell, who founded and runs the company, said she put “a good deal” of her retirement funds to get the ball rolling and put together a software development team. Campbell said she is considering whether to launch more versions that are designed to different careers such as flight attendants and nurses. A grand launch of OnWatch, the college version, is being planned for the fall at the nation’s universities. “A personal electronic device becomes a powerful tool to help young women and men protect themselves, and their friends, from becoming victims of violence,” Biden said in a news release. Students can purchase all app features for $50 per year. Several modes, such as calling 911 and campus police, as well as letting individuals know you’ve arrived at a location, are free. College students, especially young women, are particularly vulnerable because for many it is their first time living on their own without supervision, Campbell said. “I think college makes you more vulnerable — just like me being a widow in Sun Valley made me more vulnerable,” she said. Since her husband Darwin passed away in 2002, Campbell has remarried. There are other changes underway, as well. Upon leaving a recent late dinner with her children, it was time to travel to separate corners of a dark parking lot, Campbell said. “Mom, you want us to walk you to the car?” Campbell said her children asked. “And I was like, ‘No.’”