Officials found a "confused and disoriented" missing man in less than an hour Wednesday afternoon, by using the man's own cell phone signals, officials said.

Emergency dispatch challenged the Salt Lake Fire Department to find a missing man driving — somewhere.

That was essentially all the information the department had when they began investigating the man's whereabouts.

The man's worried wife had her boss call 911 at about 1 p.m. while she spoke with her husband on the phone.

"She reported that her husband is a diabetic and he was on the phone with her, but he was confused and disoriented," according to department spokesman Mark Bednarik. "It was clear that he was on a roadway, but his location was unknown."

Officials immediately went to work retracing the man's steps with the help of his wife. They announced an "attempt to locate" to other Salt Lake Valley agencies and contacted the couple's cellular provider, Sprint.

Sprint "pinpointed" the man's location by using signals from the missing man's cell phone, called pings, and passed it on to authorities. Paramedics found and treated the man at 1:45 p.m. on SR 201 at 9200 West.

Law enforcement does not have to get permission from a judge before getting a pinged location because pings are part of a customer's private cellular plan contract, Bednarik said. If someone calls 911 from a cell phone, their approximate location can be identified.

Even in circumstances in which the person does not call 911 from their phone, or the cell phone plan owner does not give permission, authorities can still ping the person's location because of an implied contractual consent clause for situations considered to be emergencies.

"That's been helpful when we need to find a hurt or unconscious person who can't verbally give us permission," Bednarik said.

But a warrant is required to track a person's location if there is no emergency, Bednarik said.

e-mail: jhancock@desnews.com