https://www.kvue.com/mobile/article/news/politics/texas-legislature/texas-introduces-clear-alerts-for-missing-adults-after-19-year-olds-death/269-8a1f1070-95e1-43d6-969f-75c87e537ec3

Texas has introduced a new Alert for endangered adults between the ages of 18 and 65. It goes into effect September 1st.

While the CLEAR Alert officially stands for 'Coordinated Law Enforcement Adult Rescue', it originated as an acronym honoring 4 young adults victims:

Cayley Mandadi
D'Lisa Kelley
Erin Castro
Ashanti Billie
And the Rest.

There is no stronger force in nature than a Mother on a Mission and I applaud Alison's work in making this legislation a success.

Our daughter Cayley (pictured above) was 14 months too old for an AMBER Alert at the time of her abduction.

Edits: Updated to say our daughter. If I'm going to dox myself. This is the thread to do so.

Significant Update: One of the TexAg posters that saw and commented on the Premium thread before it was quickly moved to Pub is now publicly advocating for CLEAR Alerts in the state of Wisconsin. Here is a radio interview he has done: https://www.wpr.org/call-emergency-alert-system-missing-adults

Added the following graphic which has been popular on social media.


The first CLEAR Alert was issued Oct 26 and had a favorable resolution.

Edit: Our non-profit, Cayley's Calling, received IRS certification and is now available on Smiles.Amazon.com

The CLEAR Alert was used in August 2020 for a young woman abducted at gunpoint.

It ended with a safe recovery and the perpetrator arrested.

https://khou.com/mobile/article/news/crime/woman-kidnapped-from-corpus-christi-found-safe-2-sources-confirm-to-3news/503-0cdfd728-8ceb-4d31-81e3-fc37110ce359

We didn't like the way the 48 Hours episode was scripted but we understand that the hung jury meant the producers needed to promote the defense's crazy theories more than they would in a normal episode.

Full video:
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/the-final-hours-of-cayley-mandadi-1/

Here is the second 48 Hours Episode. It covers some of the work we did to help achieve a small token of justice:


Hopefully more to come on the advocacy front in 2025.

Quote:

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My daughter was 14 months too old for an AMBER Alert at the time of her abduction.

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Oh my heavens. I'm so sorry.

I'm sorry for your loss; I watched this story on KVUE during the 6 pm broadcast.

Clob94 said:

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Wait what?


Your daughter was abducted? I hope everything ended up ok. If not, I feel like a jackass for bringing it up.

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You're not a jackass. Her 21st birthday would be next month. Her name is in the list above.

Every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess

Don't be angry, nothing positive ever comes from that emotion. I have no more hatred for the monster that killed my daughter than I do for the weeds in my yard. That doesn't mean we don't need Gardners to tend to our weeds.

This legislation would not be possible if people like Alison held those dark emotions.

Damn man. I applaud your ability to move on from that like you have, because I'm not sure I could ever get to that point if I were in your shoes.

Teflon John said:

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Damn man. I applaud your ability to move on from that like you have, because I'm not sure I could ever get to that point if I were in your shoes.

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We haven't moved on. Her death consumes our every thought. We're just pleased to be able to be able to do something positive in our daughter's memory.

Long overdue.

Every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess

lb3 said:

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https://www.kvue.com/mobile/article/news/politics/texas-legislature/texas-introduces-clear-alerts-for-missing-adults-after-19-year-olds-death/269-8a1f1070-95e1-43d6-969f-75c87e537ec3

Texas has introduced a new Alert for endangered adults between the ages of 18 and 65. It goes into effect September 1st.

While the CLEAR Alert officially stands for 'Combined Law Enforcement Adult Rescue', it originated as an acronym honoring 4 young adults victims:

Cayley Mandadi
D'Lisa Kelly
Erin Castro
Ashanti Billie
And the Rest.

There is no stronger force in nature than a Mother on a Mission and I applaud the work of Alison in making this legislation a success.

Our daughter Cayley was 14 months too old for an AMBER Alert at the time of her abduction.

Edit: Updated to say our daughter. If I'm going to dox myself. This is the thread to do so.

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I'm inspired by reading what you have so graciously shared so far. If and when you are willing to do so, I (and I'm guessing many others) would love to hear how you have dealt with this horrible, senseless tragedy so well. I pray for you and your family. God bless you.

OP

You're a better man than I could ever be...

God Bless you!

This thread is really meant to help raise awareness for the new Alert. We're the first large state to implement an adult alert so we need Texans to learn what it is and how it can help. The challenging portion of this awareness campaign is to raise awareness without setting false expectation that an alert could be issued just because your 25 year old daughter 'never misses church' on Sunday's.

With the AMBER Alert for children, it's a lot easier to know when they're in danger. With adults there are privacy concerns and the complexities that some disappearances could be voluntary. The Texas Department of Public Safety is a really strong and professional organization and I trust them to set the right criteria for the Alert but I'm not sure whether Texans will embrace the new CLEAR Alert they way AMBER has been embraced.

I understand that sharing the personal interest side of this story will be necessary to help drive awareness (I did abide by rule 1). But some of that is difficult on a public forum, particularly with a trial currently scheduled for December.

Perhaps if the Mods move this thread to Premium or AO, I could share more. Read my thread history for a recent thread I hijacked for some of my more recent personal thoughts.

Edit: typos, new trial date.

I want to applaud Representative Bonnan (Dr. Greg Bonnen, the Speaker's brother) and Senator Taylor. They both represent us and they couldn't have done more to help us get this legislation passed.

Dr. Bonnen and his wife met us for coffee one afternoon last summer to hear our story and my wife's proposed legislation. We had just reached the point where we could finally lift ourselves off the couch and interact with society again so our emotions were still pretty raw. The Bonnens are great Christians and showered us with so much compassion and grace that day. We left with a commitment from Dr Bonnen that he would give our bill his highest priority. When we walked out to our car I checked the time and realized that they had given up over 4 hours of their weekend to a pair of grieving parents.

That meeting was the first of many and really started the ball rolling. Dr. Bonnen's staff started working with DPS's attorneys to draft the legislation and Alison set out to assemble a large coalition of supporters so the bill couldn't be denied.

In addition to Dr. Bonnen, several other Aggies offered their assistance. One of my BQ buddies working on the legal side of law enforcement helped us with introductions to their legislative liaisons. Another BQ's buddy's widow had a long history in the capitol and walked us through the legislative process and provided moral support and generally let us know we were on the right track.

The house hearing was a critical hurdle since so many bills die in committee. In fact, D'Lisa Kelley's mother championed similar bills in previous sessions that never got out of Committee. Their bill was a much heavier lift because the circumstances of D'Lisa's disappearance had a lot of unknowns and she likely wouldn't qualify for an Alert under existing statewide alert paradigms so they set out to create a county by county alert system. Unfortunately there was no infrastructure in place for that which is likely why the Kelly Alert failed to gain traction the past three sessions.

We studied their previous bills and hearing testimony and my wife decided to focus on the mechanics of the new alert and focus less on the victim impact testimony that is so common among advocacy groups.

Our initial contacts (and a lot of cold calls and emails) helped my wife network her way to other groups and non-profits resulting in a pretty formidable team of supporters including Texas Center for the Missing, the Laura Recovery Center, the Texas Sherrif's Association, Texas Equisearch, and many many more.

She pulled in two influential witnesses for the House committee hearing. One was Beth Alberts who is the Regional Alert Coordinator for the Houston and surrounding region and another was Andy Kahan who works for Crime Stoppers and is probably second only to John Walsh (America's Most Wanted and father Andy Walsh) in terms of victims advocates in America. Needless to say, we made it through the committee and Dr. Bonnen requested it be placed on the Local and Consent calendar which is usually reserved for highway naming bills and other non partisan proclamations. It's essentially the procedural fast track for bills in the House.

Once it was passed out of the House we had to start all over in the Senate. But instead of having 8 months to prepare we had about 4 weeks. This is where Senator Taylor jumped in and he and his staff made this bill a Law. He introduced the bill in the Senate Committee hearing and had greased the skids so it got voted out of committee that same morning.

This is where we first met D'Lisa Kelley's mother. She is a sweet woman and tragically, over 6 years after her daughter's death, they still don't have the killer. After their bill died for the third time they threw their support behind our bill.

The Senate vote was nice. Senator Taylor and the Lt. Governor both recognized us in the gallery prior to the vote and gave a short tribute to Cay. The bill passed unanimously in both chambers and we patiently awaited the Governor's signature. D'Lisa Kelley's mom brought a large group to the signing ceremony and they enthusiastically showed their support for the bill.

At that point the bill was the Law in Texas but the real work has only just begun. First on the agenda was naming the bill and there were numerous meetings among our legislators, their staffs, the governor's office, DPS, and my wife before DPS settled on a name.

Once again I can't express how fortunate Texans are to have DPS working on our behalf. They're the class of Texas and competitive with any national police force across the globe. From the Ranger who lead the investigation into our daughter's death to the Director, Col. McCraw, and everyone in between, we couldn't be more pleased with their professionalism.

With the naming complete we needed to hold today's press conference and do some media. But the continuing efforts will be on promoting awareness and working to train the 70k+ law enforcement officers across the state.

This fall we're hoping to bring together some of the victim's families to help put a broader face on the Alert. In the meantime, please mention the CLEAR Alert to friends, family, and coworkers.

e=mc2 said:

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OP, you're an inspiration!

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Alison is the inspiration and far stronger than me. She did 99.9% of the work while I simply kept the lights on at home. From the day we met, I've been grateful that she lets me tag come along for the ride. She's been an awesome partner.

Everyone commenting that they couldn't do this stuff just hasn't been forced into this situation. We've grown quite a bit stronger over the past two years. I can assure you, at the beginning of this tragedy we could barely face getting up each day