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Investigators believe she was abducted, but her body has yet to be found
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Sessions’ mother, and the parents of Jennifer Kesse, urged lawmakers to pass a bill requiring local law enforcement to support missing persons cases
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Since its passage in 2008, Sessions’ mother says it has saved at least 2,000 Floridians through silver, purple and blue alerts
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SEE ALSO:\u00a0‘We Are The Essentials’ helps find the missing<\/a><\/p>\n
It\u2019s been a long time since 80-year-old Hilary Sessions has seen her daughter, but she\u2019ll never forget her independent, precocious 20-year-old, Tiffany.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was ready to do something new. She was ready to be a college student, \u2018Oh mom,\u2019\u201d said Sessions.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/tiffany_hilary_sessions_FL_1986.jpeg\")
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Tiffany Sessions (left) and her mother, Hilary Sessions, at her high school graduation in 1986. (Courtesy of Hilary Sessions)<\/p>\n
Enrolled as a finance major at\u00a0UF, Tiffany lived\u00a0in\u00a0an off-campus Gainesville apartment. She went out on her usual walk on the afternoon of Feb. 9, 1989. Usually she\u2019d exercise with her roommate, but not that day.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen, about 9 o\u2019clock, the phone rang. \u2018Hello?\u2019 It was Tiffy\u2019s roommate. And the first thing she said was, \u2018Ms. Sessions, I think we have a problem,\u2019\u201d Sessions said.<\/p>\n
Tiffany never returned home. Hilary says, at first, investigators didn\u2019t take the situation seriously\u00a0enough. At the time, there was no standard operating procedure for missing persons cases in Florida.<\/p>\n
\u201cInitially, they said, \u2018Oh, she\u2019s a college student, she\u2019s out with her friends,\u2019 That\u2019s not Tiffy,\u201d said Sessions. \u201cI just kept saying, \u2018She\u2019s got to come home, she\u2019s got to come home. And I was praying that everything was going to be OK, so whatever\u2019s happening, she\u2019ll come back and explain what is happening,\u2019 Nothing happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/tiffany_missing_hilary_sessions_FL.jpeg\")
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Tiffany Sessions, a finance major at UF, went missing on Feb. 9, 1989. (Courtesy of Hilary Sessions)<\/p>\n
As days\u00a0turned into weeks and weeks into months, answers were no more apparent than on the first day she disappeared.<\/p>\n
When the years turned into decades, Hilary\u2019s fight for Tiffany turned to\u00a0Tallahassee.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re concerned with the fact that there are no national mandatory legislation, bills, in place right now to protect kids,\u201d Sessions said in an interview with Spectrum Bay News 9 in February 1999.<\/p>\n
Hilary and the parents of Jennifer Kesse say that when their daughter went missing, law enforcement didn\u2019t initially search for them. They were over 18, technically adults, so the families began lobbying legislators, like Lee Constantine, for change.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt got to me that yes, they were absolutely right. Why, just because you turn a certain age, 17 to 18 or 19, that now you\u2019re an adult and you can\u2019t even file a missing persons report because you\u2019re an adult? It made no sense at all,\u201d said Constantine, former Florida state senator.<\/p>\n
In 2008, state\u00a0legislators voted on a bill requiring law enforcement to adopt uniform policies\u00a0for\u00a0missing person\u00a0cases, to report missing persons to statewide and national databases, and to collect DNA from family after 90 days missing.<\/p>\n
At the last second, an amendment was filed to rename the act\u00a0for Jennifer Kesse and Tiffany Sessions<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThis one became very personal because I knew what I was doing was going to ensure that what happened to the Kesses and the Sessions never happened again,\u201d Constantine, who now serves as a Seminole County commissioner, said.<\/p>\n That law later became the basis for the silver, purple and blue alerts statewide<\/a>.\u00a0Hilary says\u00a0more than 2,000 missing and endangered Floridians\u00a0have been saved.<\/p>\n But\u00a0she\u00a0was still no closer to answers about Tiffany.<\/p>\n Todd Hand is now leading the investigation into Tiffany’s disappearance for the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office in Gainesville.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was an array of people of interest from the get-go, but over time those people had alibis and so on and so forth, and no one was really of interest,\u201d said Hand.<\/p>\n