WATERVILLE – Police Officer Dan Goss heard a faint cry for help.

He trailed the voice to a bedroom and found a 96-year-old woman barely conscious on the floor. Goss, who had been alerted by a computerized system that routinely checks on elderly residents, called for an ambulance.

“If no one had come to check on her, she would have died, plain and simple,” he said recently.

That was the morning of Dec. 3, the first under the city’s “Are You OK?” program.

Police Chief John Morris bought the computerized system last year with an $8,500 grant, hoping to give elderly and homebound residents greater peace of mind.

In the weeks before, Waterville police had responded to a series of unattended deaths.

Around the same time, a community-policing survey concluded that elderly residents most fear being victimized, getting sick and dying alone.

Since its purchase in the fall of 1999, the free service has drawn 50 subscribers from Waterville, Winslow and Oakland. Calling that figure disappointingly low, Morris said he hopes news of the recent rescue will draw more people to the program.

“That’s my biggest disappointment – that we don’t have more subscribers,” Morris, the police chief of six years lamented recently. “People think it’s a bother to us and it’s really not.”

At least once a day, the system calls subscribers at pre-arranged times. When someone answers the phone, a greeting recorded by Morris’ secretary, Kelly Elias, wishes them well and gives them a number to call if they need anything.

If, however, the system gets no answer after trying a home at least twice, it will alert an emergency dispatcher who will call an officer to the person’s home.

That is what happened on Dec. 3.

When “Are You OK?” called the elderly woman at 6 p.m. the previous day, she answered the phone. But when it called back at 9:30 the next morning, the system twice received no answer.

Goss responded to the woman’s home and noticed immediately that something was wrong. The shades were drawn and the morning newspaper was still in its rack.

From a form the woman had filled out when she joined the service,

Goss knew the code to her garage door and the location of a key to unlock the house.

When Goss walked inside, he identified himself and heard a muffled voice answer from a back room. He then found the feeble woman lying on the floor beside her bed and unable to get up.

Goss called for an ambulance. The woman, who had been severely dehydrated, was admitted to a local hospital for treatment of a broken hip.

“It was an immense feeling of relief to find her there alive,” Goss said.

That sense of security is what led John Bolduc, a 92-year-old retired school custodian, to subscribe to the service.

Although neighbors and his son regularly check in on him, the 9 a.m. call from the city each day lets him know someone else is looking out for him, too.

“I feel relief because I know that if anything would happen to me,” Bolduc said Sunday. “I feel safe.”