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CNN Live Today

Interview with Joann Donnellan

Aired August 02, 2002 - 12:05   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Amber Alert system is named after Amber Hagerman, a 9-year-old Texas girl who was kidnapped and killed six years ago. Here is her mother's reaction to the rescue of the California girls yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONNA NORRIS, AMBER'S MOTHER: I was excited. It made me happy, it put a smile on my face, and I looked up at my daughter, and I said way to go, baby, you did it again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: To talk more about Amber Alert, we are joined by Joann Donnellan with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. She is in our Washington bureau -- Joann, hello.

JOANN DONNELLAN, NATIONAL CENTER FOR MISSING AND EXPLOITED CHILDREN: Hello. How are you?

PHILLIPS: Well, I guess this is definitely good news for your Amber Alert project.

DONNELLAN: This is great. I mean, this is why the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children took on this campaign back in October and launched it nationwide. We didn't create this program. It was created six years ago by the Dallas-Fort Worth Radio Association, along with local law enforcement agencies. And so, you know, our agency is all about protecting kids, and this is what we can do to get this message out to the public that the Amber Alert is a rapid response to these serious child abduction cases, and it's working.

PHILLIPS: Tell us a little bit more about Amber, and just the history behind her case, and was it just so powerful that it triggered this effort to start this program?

DONNELLAN: Extremely. You know, Amber, nine-year-old little girl, very bright, Girl Scout, used to Rollerblade, loved vanilla ice cream, all American kid. She is riding her bike one Saturday, a man in a black pickup truck pulls up, yanks her from the bike and drags her off and unfortunately four days later she was found brutally murdered. So much so that the community was so outraged by the brutality that they never wanted to see this happen again, and they were motivated to take action. And that's actually when a radio listener called up one day to a radio station and said, you know, you use that weather emergency system to tell us about tornadoes. Why can't you use it for serious child abduction cases?

So there you go. Law enforcement teamed up with the local broadcasters and they developed the Amber Alert system. And since they developed it, it has spread across the country. There are 43 different programs right now and like you said, 14 of those are statewide, and we at the National Center, through a kit that we have developed to help communities implement this, hope to get it going all across the country by the end of next year, and we're well on our way.

PHILLIPS: Finally -- that's why I'm curious. Why is this system not in every state, and how can people push to get it implemented into their state?

DONNELLAN: Well, they can call us at the National Center at 1- 800-THE LOST, or go to our web site at www.missingkids.com, and we can get them information. They can write a letter to their local law enforcement agency or their general manager of their radio and TV station and say listen, I've heard about this program, this is excellent, we want to save our kids in our community, let's get it going.

And that's the first start of really making it happen. But we have been working with the National Governors' Association and the Attorneys General's Association, Congress has endorsed this, and the FCC gave the green light to using the Emergency Alert System in February, so everybody is getting on the bandwagon now, and we are confident that this is going to be a well-known program in every state by the end of next year.

PHILLIPS: Well, Joann, we have a bit of breaking news here, I don't know if you heard about the police are combing the San Francisco International Airport for a missing 12-year-old girl from China, have you heard about that yet?

DONNELLAN: Yes, I actually just heard it a moment ago when you talked about it.

PHILLIPS: So is it possible to get involved and get an Amber Alert out? Would this be the time for an Amber Alert in the San Francisco area?

DONNELLAN: Well, I think that investigators need to determine, did the girl wander off, is there foul play involved? Because the one thing to remember, the Amber program is really used for the most serious cases. And it's not usually typically put out when a child has run away or a parental abduction case has occurred, or maybe if the child wandered off. We need to take a look at what the investigators know, and then they can determine whether an alert is necessary. But I can tell you, every radio and TV station out there would be great if they could be airing this right now, so people can try to search for her.

PHILLIPS: Well, Joann Donnellan, thank you so much, we are going to tell everyone what we do know right now.

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