What is Florida's Silver Alert?
To report a missing person, or if you have information pertaining to an active Silver Alert, please call your local law enforcement immediately; do not wait.** Florida’s Silver Alert is for cognitively impaired individuals who become lost while driving a car or lost while on foot. Silver Alert is a plan to help local law enforcement in the rescue of missing persons who have a cognitive impairment, such as Alzheimer’s disease or dementia. Through the use of dynamic message signs along Florida roadways, Silver Alerts are broadcast to the public. When the missing person message is announced, the family will be contacted by a local Memory Disorder Center for follow-up support and services.
This is how and why they started this program.
After her death, local people came together to build what they hoped would be a pilot program based in Pinellas County to prevent such tragedies in the future. Among the original committee members was Largo Police Chief Lester Aradi, Sallie Parks of the Area Agency on Aging (AAA), Pinellas Sheriff Jim Coats, and Mrs. Zelter’s daughter, Mary Lallucci. Instead of remaining a locally based pilot program in Pinellas County, their program became a statewide initiative based upon the highly successful Amber Alert for missing children.
This is how and why they started this program.
History of Silver Alert
On Feb. 26, 2008, Mrs. Mary Zelter, of Largo, FL, drove away from her assisted living facility in her white Chrysler Sebring convertible and never returned. Mary was 86 years old, and suffered from dementia. Her body was found a week later 10 miles away in the Intracoastal Waterway. Her submerged car was nearby.
After her death, local people came together to build what they hoped would be a pilot program based in Pinellas County to prevent such tragedies in the future. Among the original committee members was Largo Police Chief Lester Aradi, Sallie Parks of the Area Agency on Aging (AAA), Pinellas Sheriff Jim Coats, and Mrs. Zelter’s daughter, Mary Lallucci. Instead of remaining a locally based pilot program in Pinellas County, their program became a statewide initiative based upon the highly successful Amber Alert for missing children.
On October 8, 2008, Governor Charlie Crist signed an Executive Order enacting the Florida Silver Alert. In June, 2009, the Florida Silver Alert Support Committee was established by the Department of Elder Affairs (DOEA).
From April through June, 2010, a DOEA grant funded The Silver Alert Project. The goal was to develop coordination and standardization of law enforcement protocols. The project was designed to provide statewide education and training to all Florida law enforcement personnel, members of the community, dementia care specialists, caregivers, and persons with Alzheimer’s disease or related disorders. The aim was to increase understanding of the benefits of the Silver Alert system and to improve public safety. In order to accomplish this, the Silver Alert Support Committee explored the causes of elopement or wandering, where a cognitively impaired person becomes lost and endangered, and also explored ways to decrease the incidence of these events.
A second DOEA grant funded the Silver Alert Support Committee from January 2011 through June 2011. The aim was to increase awareness of the Silver Alert system and ensure that Silver Alert recipients are connected to appropriate community services upon their safe return home, thus decreasing the incidence of repeat Silver Alerts.
Due to the advocacy of the Silver Alert Support Committee, Florida Silver Alert became state law during the 2011 Florida legislative session. Florida statute 937.0201, addressing missing persons, was amended to include Silver Alert. The term “missing endangered person” now includes missing adults who meet the criteria for Silver Alert. According to this law, persons providing information related to the missing person, when acting in good faith, are provided immunity from civil liability. As the result of this legislation, agencies (both law enforcement and service providers) may now communicate information about the endangered missing person among themselves and to the media. In an effort to expand Silver Alert to better accommodate our community in 2011-2012 Silver Alert is now applicable to those who are “lost on foot”.
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