"I'm the queen of minimum payments and rotating credit cards."

The parallels rocked Michele McCauley to the core.

Five years ago, she watched the grim reports of a Boca mother and daughter found murdered in their black, still-idling SUV after they were forced to withdraw money from a Bank of America ATM.

Just like Nancy Bochicchio, McCauley drove a black SUV and she had a Bank of America account. And she too was suppose to be at the Boca Town Center alone with her children that same day on December 12, 2007 when Bochicchio and 7-year-old Joey Bochicchio-Hauser were abducted from the mall.

The tragedy — Bochicchio called police on her cellphone but was cut off — made McCauley the mother of a new invention: Earlier this month, the U.S. Patent Office cleared the way for McCauley to patent the Trax24 Pal, developed in response to the still-unsolved Bocchiccio homicides.

Read more at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.