Diana Simone, from Yahoo News
Campain for Change
“They were saying Amber was taken at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, thrown in a pickup truck and driven somewhere, and nobody saw anything. I’m sorry, that's not possible…The problem was not that people didn't see them, it's that they didn't know what they were seeing.”
-Diana Simone
“In the days following the girl’s funeral, Diana Simone, a Fort Worth mom who had never met Amber, called a local radio station with an idea: If broadcasters can alert the public to severe weather, then why not do the same when a child is abducted?”
-Jason Sickles 2016, Yahoo News
Beginning in 1996, broadcasters from Dallas-Fort Worth took Simones idea to the local police, where an early Amber Alert system was developed. This system quickly caught on and spread across different states. At the time of 2001, only four states used similar systems to alert the public of abducted children.
Though a small number, it was enough to get the attention of Congress. The Amber Alert was added to the Protect act, where it would be given the tools to launch the system across the country. Sponsored by Senator Orrin Hatch and Congressman Mike Pence, the PROTECT Act was set to be signed into law.
Orrin Hatch, from Wikipedia
Mike Pence, from In.gov