The story behind the AMBER Alert initiative – NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

A crime that forever changed how this country treats cases of kidnapping happened 30 years ago this week.

The tragic kidnapping and death of a little girl in Arlington in 1996 led to the AMBER Alert: America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response.

“You can tell this is a 30-year-old brochure we printed up about the criteria,” said Dee Anderson, the former spokesperson for the Arlington Police Department, who was there from the start.

“We started with a child 15 years of age or younger, I think it’s 17 now,” he said as he looked at a brochure for what was originally called The Amber Plan.

It was named for Amber Hagerman, a 9-year-old girl, who was kidnapped on January 13, 1996.

As department spokesperson, Anderson’s job was to get information to the public but there was little to share in Amber’s case.

Amber was riding bikes with her little brother that day. The brother rode back to their grandfather’s house.

There was just one witness to what happened next.

“And really he heard her scream before he looked to see what was going on. And so he didn’t have a whole lot of time to focus and gather what was happening. The suspect had her around the waist, put her in it, threw her in his truck, and drove off. And that’s all we knew,” Anderson said.

Time was the enemy. Back then, there was no way to quickly get out information about a kidnapping. No smart phones. No internet. No alert that could put more eyes looking for a missing child.

“The largest investigation still in the history of our police department. More man hours, more people, more leads. I mean, the leads came in by the hundreds and sadly they were most of them were not useful to us,” Anderson said.

The little girl’s body was found four days later in a creek, but not the man or the pick up truck.

A murder that remains unsolved. A devastating, crushing loss.

“She was Arlington’s child. And it made a huge difference, I think, in the response, in the public sentiment that came afterwards and the frustration,” Anderson recalled.

Something had to change and it did. It led to the AMBER Alert.

It started with a woman’s simple question to a radio station. If we have weather alerts and a civil defense alert, then why why not an alert when a child is kidnapped?

“She sat down and wrote a letter to the Association of Radio Managers, which is the general managers of radio stations, and said, ‘Why can’t we do something about this?’

Well, it bounced around. “They tried to start it up,” Anderson said. “But there was no structure behind it, really. A year, maybe 18 months go by, nothing’s really happened.”

A new association president reignited the converersation.

“And from there, that’s where the real work began in that what ended up where we are now with it. It started in that conference room where these guys said, ‘We’re willing to commit our resources but you’ve got to get law enforcement on board,” Anderson said.

The website for the Texas Association of Broadcasters says Dallas-Fort Worth area broadcasters teamed with local police to develop a system to help find abducted children using stations’ Emergency Alert System (EAS) equipment. The Amber Plan was established in 1997.

The first child to be rescued was in 1998. An 8-week-old in Arlington taken by her babysitter.

“Fifteen minutes after it went out, guy’s driving down the road and says, I see her in the truck. We pull them over, get Rae-Leigh back. Boom. You know, first success story. And that launched it,” Anderson said.

Five years later in 2003, President George W. Bush signed the AMBER Alert, America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response, into law with Amber’s family watching.

Amber’s case changed the way law enforcement searches for missing children.

“That is a little bit of salve on the wound, I guess, a little bit of solace that we take in it that we’ve helped other children,” Anderson said, “but it doesn’t ease the pain of losing her.”

Anderson, a husband and father, retired from the police department, served four terms as Tarrant County Sheriff and is now proud to be “Pops” to his grandchildren.

He was dad to a little girl and baby boy during the Amber Hagerman case.

“My children were very small. My son doesn’t even remember it. But, you know, my daughter was five, I think. She’d crawl into my lap and say, we found her yet dad? And I’d say, no, but we will. And that night I had to come home and say, she didn’t make it,” Anderson recalled.

In a text exchange with NBC 5’s Deborah Ferguson, Anderson’s daughter wrote: “The AMBER Alert is his life’s legacy and his way of making the world a better place for his children and grandchildren. We are so beyond proud of him”

“I wish I felt as good about it, but it’s hard,” Anderson said when he heard what was written in the text.

Thirty years later, Anderson says the headline to Amber’s story should be we all need to be constantly vigilant with our children.

“Everyone just has to be so vigilant, and they have to pay attention, and they have to do everything we can to keep vulnerable children out of harm’s way. And when they do get in harm’s way, we have to use every tool in our toolbox, everything in our ability to try to save them and get it back and punish the people involved. Her legacy lives on because of the plan, and I’m grateful for that,” he said.