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When Dan Williams gets an idea for a new invention, his goal is to make it as useful on as many different levels as is humanly possible.

A former 11-year officer with the Florida Marine Patrol and currently an insurance salesman in Maryville, Williams, 42, came up with the idea for the StayAlive while bobbing along in a boat, in the dark, during a search for a missing person in the Florida Keys several years ago.

That invention, a life jacket with panels attached to the front containing survival gear including flares, a flashlight, signal mirror, nylon rope and an inflatable signaling device, has a number of uses for its wearer.

For Williams and his co-inventor Helmut Siepmann, it became even handier this week as the invention placed him in the top-25 contestants in the annual Modern Marvels Invent Now Challenge.

And he didn't even have to wear it to get there.

The competition — named for The History Channel's "Modern Marvels" program and a partnership of the cable network, Lexus and the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation — took 2,500 entries from around the country and narrowed them down to 25 people representing 17 different states.

Recently relocated from Florida, Williams said his invention came out of the necessity he saw while on the job in the Sunshine State.

"Everything you got to see on TV, I was pretty fortunate I got to do," Williams said of his time as a marine patrolman. "From chasing drug boats to seizing half-a-million dollar crawfish boats for illegal taking of lobster, and things like that."

On-the-job idea

Wes Hope/The Daily Times

Panels inside the StayAlive personal flotation device, along with holding survival gear, can be used as hand-held paddles for swimming in emergency situations.

While working on a rough-water search and rescue, Williams mentioned to a fellow officer how much easier it would be to find the missing person if that person had the gear — particularly the distress flares — with them in the water that they have to have on their boat anyway.

"While we're looking and bouncing around, I'm seeing this in my head," he said. "As simple as it sounds, if you're not seen, you're not rescued."

Combining a life jacket, the first thing most people grab when a boat starts to sink, with survival gear just seemed to make sense.

"From my experience ... we never found anybody (in the water) with any more than a life jacket," Williams said. "There's just not time, or people don't think about it.

"Basically it's, 'Oh s----, we're sinking,' and they grab life jackets."

More than three years and a $100,000 investment later (just getting Coast Guard approval cost about $30,000), the StayAlive was officially available to the public. So far Williams said he has sold about 5,000 of the life jackets at $99.95 each.

And the last couple years have been a bit of a roller coaster, as Williams and the StayAlive have made the rounds in Popular Science Magazine, CNN and even the New York Museum of Modern Art's SAFE exhibit.

"My first time in New York, and there we were with everybody else walking around with champagne glasses and chess ... and there's my life jacket on the way."

Fit for a king

And one of the most interesting experiences the StayAlive brought into Williams' life came in the form of an e-mail, of dubious origins at first, from a representative of the king of Jordan.

"I don't know what magazine they saw (the StayAlive) in, but they saw it somewhere," he said. "So I get this very formal e-mail, very polite, but very formal.

"I was like, 'What?'," he said. "You've got to read this type of thing twice."

He wasn't sure the order — 15 StayAlives for the king's personal yacht — was legitimate at first, but when he was given a shipping address to the Jordanian Embassy in Washington, D.C., "the units were there, they wired the money, and I was like, this is the real deal. And off they went."

Invent Now Challenge

An event like the Modern Marvels Invent Now Challenge is a great way for independent inventors to get their product out there, Williams said.

"This Modern Marvels, they're offering a way for the independent small person like myself to get some recognition and maybe bring something to market that's viable," he said. "Which, I don't want to brag, but I know that my product is very viable from what I did for a living.

"It's nice that a larger organization like The History Channel, 'Modern Marvels', is allowing opportunities for people like myself and others involved to actually say, 'Hey, we're out here and, you know, give us some consideration.'"

Now that the top-25 inventors in the Invent Now Challenge have been selected — by a panel of "famed inventors, technologists and industry experts," according to a release from the Challenge — they will hit the road in a traveling exhibition.

Winners on TV

The top five finalists will receive cash prizes, with the grand-prize winner receiving a $25,000 grant. All five will be featured on The History Channel during "Modern Marvels: Great Inventions Week" May 15-17.

If Williams is able to take the top spot, the money will go right back into the StayAlive, he said. He thinks he has a pretty good chance of getting into the top five, but simply being chosen out of the 2,500 entries is a real honor.

"Because out of 2,500 inventions that they reviewed, and apparently (The History Channel) had some pretty intuitive people reviewing these projects, that speaks for itself right there," he said, also noting the importance of his invention. "And again, in my personal opinion, I know one thing for sure, this life jacket will be the deciding factor in saving lives."