Park-Safe system gets the green light

It was a morning jog that gave Gerald Ellison his “Eureka!” moment.

The McAlester man was inspired by his jogging buddy’s concern for an older relative.

“He was mentioning that his uncle kept running into the wall of the garage (with his car),” said Ellison, who lived in Broken Arrow for 10 years before retiring to his native McAlester.

After trying to hang a tennis ball from the garage ceiling and other contraptions, the uncle still had no luck, Ellison said.

That’s when he had his idea: Create a device to show a driver where to park their car in exactly the same place every time they pull into the garage.

“I’ve been in electronics my whole life, so I got home that night and sat down and sketched what I thought might work as a rough idea,” he said.

Along with friends John Cotton and Randy Dunn, Ellison formed a company called D.E.C. Inc. And after several years of trial and error and a lengthy patenting process, the result is Park-Safe, a home garage parking system that alerts the driver to stop the car in the appropriate place.

It works by transmitting an infrared beam across the length of the garage, and when the driver pulls in, the car’s front bumper will break the beam. Meanwhile, a light mounted on the garage wall will turn green. As soon as the driver has pulled in far enough, the light will turn red, alerting the driver to stop.

Ellison said the system costs $79 including shipping, but he’s not necessarily interested in turning a huge profit — his company will donate $25 per unit sold to the Tulsa-based adoption agency, Dillon International Inc.

He said he’s personally connected to the agency.

“My stepdaughter and her husband adopted a little girl from China, who’s 7 years old now,” he said. “She and I said, ‘Why don’t we contact Dillon and see if they’d be interested?’ ”

And they were.

“As an adoptive grandparent he really wanted to help,” said Susanna Will, Dillon’s development director. “He wants to make his product available and at the same time give back to the agency and be able to help our work with other children.”

“His help will go directly to help the children,” she said.

Ellison joked that the $25 could wind up taking most of his profit on Park-Safe, but he was happy to do so.

“That will help children to be adopted to some parents who really want kids,” he said. “So many people want them and can’t have them.”

For more on Park-Safe, go to www.tulsaworld.com/parksafe.

Kim Brown 581-8474
kim.brown@tulsaworld.com