Amber Alert in fifth year of saving abductees

Valley Press on ^ | Wednesday, August 1, 2007. | JAMES RUFUS KOREN

[BenLurkin]

On Aug. 1, 2002, California's first Amber Alert was issued for two teenage girls abducted from Quartz Hill's "lovers' lane."

The program hadn't yet been signed into law, but the alerts went out on California Highway Patrol signs and over the radio, and a Caltrans employee spotted the kidnapper in Kern County.

"It was really incredible," said Assemblywoman Sharon Runner, R-Lancaster. "I don't even think Amber Alert was really up and running, but that was the first case. And it was so ironic - it was about a mile and a half from our house."

Runner's husband, State Sen. George Runner, was assemblyman at the time, and about a year earlier he had brought the idea of a California Amber Alert system to then-Gov. Gray Davis. The system, created in Texas, already had been implemented in several other states.

The Amber Alert lets law enforcement agencies and the media release up-to-the-minute information about abducted children, helping to find and recover them quickly.

In the five-year history of the state's Amber Alerts, 103 alerts have been issued, and all 131 abducted children have been found and returned safely, according to the CHP.

George Runner said the Amber Alert idea came to him through a friend in the Lancaster West Rotary club. He passed it along to Davis, who seemed receptive but didn't quickly act to move the program along.

The law was more or less in place, but not quite finalized, when Valley teenagers Tamara Brooks and Jacqueline Marris were abducted near the Quartz Hill water towers.

Thanks to the Amber Alert and a Caltrans employee who was listening to the radio, the two girls were rescued 12 hours after being kidnapped.