Gold and Silver Alert Programs Expand to Protect More Wanderers

The presence of these programs is growing all over the country. Here are two examples.

The video above explores Florida's Silver Alert Program. The video below offers news coverage on New York State's Gold Alert Program.

New York State has a variety of local and regional programs. Now, they are in the final stages of taking them State-wide in their "Gold Alert" program.

The New York State Senate gave final passage of legislation that expands the existing alert system to help locate missing vulnerable adults. The “Gold Alert” bill, sponsored by Senator John A. DeFrancisco, creates a system to help authorities get proper notifications, coordinate resources, and investigate incidents where individuals, such as those with illnesses or disabilities, go missing. Watch the following video for more details.

If signed into law by Governor Andrew Cuomo, the bill would use the “Amber Alert” infrastructure, which is already in place, to disseminate information about missing vulnerable adults through a statewide system, using a variety of resources, including television and radio stations, posters, highway message signs, New York State Thruway Authority services areas, e-mail alerts, and the Internet, in hopes of engaging the public in finding leads to locate the missing individual.  

By enacting this law, New York would join several other states in enacting similar programs to assist families of cognitively impaired adults with locating their missing loved ones. These states include:

• Illinois
• West Virginia
• North Carolina
• Florida
• Texas

“In 2007 an elderly Syracuse (NY) woman who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease left her home in the middle of the night and traveled all the way to her former home in New Haven, Connecticut,” said Senator DeFrancisco. “Authorities weren’t alerted that the woman was missing until after she discovered someone else living in her former home. This incident and several others like it demonstrate the need for an alert system to assist in the search for missing vulnerable adults.”

“It is critical that we enact a quick and effective way to help find and safely return adults who go missing from their residences,” Senate Majority Leader Dean G. Skelos. “The Gold Alert system will expand upon Amber Alerts to engage the public and law enforcement in finding individuals with impaired cognitive abilities who may be unable to return home on their own.”