I had an experience with that. Altho I can't answer how they did it.
My son and his wife were living apart due to him being transferred to another state with his job and their marriage was rocky because wife didn't want to move. So on a Sat afternoon my daughter gets a call from the wife and she says he just sent me a terrible text and it sounds like he's going to commit suicide. My daughter has her forward the text to her and is horrified by his words. She calls him repeatedly and he doesn't answer. She asks wife where is he? Wife says I dunno probably where he lives.
Daughter calls me while driving to my house and says keep calling him until he answers...he will only answer for you. He does answer and is out of it and won't tell me where he is. Daughter is on the phone with the sheriff's dept in his small town, small county. They go to his house and look thru the windows and there is no evidence he is there. No car in the garage etc. He could be anywhere.
In the meantime his dad and I both take turns trying to get him to tell us where he is. He is so out of it and won't say but he finally tells me what he took before he goes unconscious. Time is of the essence and I am inconsolable. I call wife on the house phone and she says she has no idea where he is nor does she care.
His open line in which I can still him barely breathing goes dead. Daughter is still on the phone with sheriffs office as they search his yard, neighborhood. She says can you ping his phone? And they say oh yes we can. While I am thinking why didn't you do that two hours ago? But thank God they did.
They ping his phone and he is 500 miles away at the wife's house. My husband calls the wife back and she's not home and won't go home to look for him. She hopes he's dead she says. The sheriff contacts police in the other state and gives my daughter the phone number of the officer headed out to the wife's house.
Now she is talking with him giving him the exact address and filling him in on what we know. Ambulance is also on the way. They find him in the garage. Officer puts her on the phone with paramedic and she tells him what he told us he took. They now know what they are working with and get him to the hospital where he spent a couple of days in intensive care and then another week in the hospital before he went to another hospital for the suicide attempt.
Wife never once told us he had driven down that morning to surprise her.....roses in hand. She surprised him by being in bed with another man. They left him there heart broken. I hate her to this day and will never forgive her. But he's well and happy and divorced altho the wife fought like hell to get him back when she realized he didn't want her anymore. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Oh Sassy, so relieved for you that your son survived it! But what a living nightmare! I will never understand that degree of evil that can sit back and not help while another person's life is in danger.
Thankfully, she's out of your lives forever. So happy too to hear that your son is now doing well too.
He was so blessed to have such loving, caring parents and a sister who did everything they could which ultimately saved his life.
Good point too about the sheriff's office finding his phone and relaying the information. However they accomplished it, it's so wonderful they did.
Sounds like your son had someone up above in his corner too. Wow. Thank you for sharing!