SHE IS HOME – Safe and Sound
SAFE!
What a day today was. I went from one spectrum of emotions to the other in hours. I had almost convinced myself it was all hopeless and we would not have a good ending. It sure makes me feel for all those parents out there who are still missing children. In fact while I have the attention;
“The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act was passed on July 25, 2006—20 years after Adam Walsh’s abduction. The act established a National Sex Offender Registry law, but recent news reports reveal most states will not be in compliance with the law by the upcoming July 2009 deadline. If senators and state representatives don’t comply with and fully fund the act, it will expire.”
Visit this link to find out how you can make sure this does not expire. John Walsh said it best… something to the effect of , we just spent billions to bail out the banks… how about we bail out our children….
Ok… here is how it all went down.. Thanks to all of you out there that used your connections, twitter accounts, social networks, etc… Because I am absolutely positive that is what saved the day. The Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Dept. in the past 24 hours have been so inudated with phone calls from you angry citizens wondering why nothing was being done. The pressure all of you put on the media and the law enforcement agencies made all the difference. We could not get her picture on the news because there was no signs of “foul play” and it, as far as I am concerned wasn’t yet newsworthy. I guess you have to be a 6 year old child or a body to get some action. I knew though that they could not ignore the public. Sure they could pass the family off as concerned but they were no where near as pro-active until the Internet got active. Can’t pass hundreds/thousands of people off.
However, Channel 4 news here in Denver came by and did an interview with my sister and took the angle that it was “new technology” that was being called into action. They referred to Twitter and the various social networks. So that was the story… there just happen to be a missing teen along with it. But whatever… because it worked. Everyone of you can pat yourselves on your back for a job well done. I will post the video of the news report asap… because you all should see it. I just need to get it online.
You know.. The investigator said in all his years on the force he has never seen or had this kind of help/response from family and friends. We did more than most people ever think of. I found that a startling statistic. There all are all these people who have no idea how to really use the Internet for this kind of thing. He suggested that when all this blew over that we should think about putting together a quick howto. That way other parents can reach out like we did. I think that is a great idea.
On behalf of my family I have to thank each and everyone who helped from the bottom of my heart. You all had so many different impacts on the situtation but most of all you kept us sane. I was quickly crackin though and I am not sure how much longer I could have taken it without really losing it. Those of you who donated reward money… a special thanks. We raised over 3,000 dollars in less than 24 hours. It would have been more but I stopped taking donations. You will all get your money back over the next day. I want to make sure your paypal fees are recouped.
As far as how Jennifer is or what actually happened, all I can say right now is that she is OK and appears unharmed. I don’t really want to go into too many details for various reasons but at least know that she is a little shook-up but is not hurt. It turns out someone she was with saw something on the Internet about her being missing and made sure she got home. So whether it was Twitter, myspace, whatever… That is what did it.
BTW. I did get the phone records today. 1 day wait. Investigator said even with a warrant, the quickest he was able to get phone records for anything was 3 days and it usually takes longer. The actual text messages were going to take a few days but we did get the incoming/outgoing. It wasn’t the gold mine that I had hoped but it was helpful. Now normally even on a rush job they do take a few days to get it to you, but the guys over at Cricket on Arapahoe road though stepped up my request and got it for me in 1 day. Big thank you to them.
Ok… so that’s about it for now. I will get those videos up within the next hour or so. Again thank you to everyone. I hope that I never have to go through something like this again. It is a feeling people should go a lifetime, without.
————————————————–
UPDATE:
Someone asked me how many new Twitter followers I got over the last 24 hours. Almost 400! This page alone recieved over 30k hits yesterday. That is just awesome. The word sure was out!
Here is the video from Channel 4 in Denver today;
I edited out the interview with my sister. I just wanted to show you all how much your efforts had impact.
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April 16th, 2009 at 11:25 pm
That’s great news! Glad to hear she’s home safe and sound.
April 16th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
Good job guys!
April 16th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
great news!
i saw the notice first in Neil Gaiman’s twitter. Glad to know your niece is safe. 
April 16th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
“This video has been removed by the user”
April 16th, 2009 at 11:57 pm
Glad she’s ok, man.
April 16th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
Hang on guys.. video is coming. I posted a half version by mistake. Few mins out.
April 17th, 2009 at 12:01 am
Ok video should be fine now… reload.
April 17th, 2009 at 12:02 am
Great to hear Frank, Glad everything turned out ok
Will be popping back in after work to check out the video. Good to hear I could help in some way.
April 17th, 2009 at 12:13 am
Glad to hear everyone is okay. Even from here is Australia, we were worried because we love Linda (Jenny’s grandmother)
April 17th, 2009 at 12:27 am
Very glad to hear she is home safe and sound. I really hope that you do get around to that “howto” and maybe even see about getting it sent out to law enforcement agencies around the country. If the agony you and your family went through can help others then that is one good thing that can come of this. Again, glad that she is home safe.
April 17th, 2009 at 12:32 am
I think you may be on to something with that HowTo…Maybe Scott Diamond and I can help get it around California precincts. Could they have found an older and more out of touch reporter for the on site interview?
April 17th, 2009 at 12:48 am
Glad to hear the good news.
April 17th, 2009 at 2:03 am
I’m so glad she’s home safe & sound, and so furious that it took an internet worth of people and a news broadcast to get the police to DO SOMETHING!
I have a lost dog finder group on twitter; I wonder. Is there a missing child group?
April 17th, 2009 at 4:47 am
whew. very relieved for you and your family.
April 17th, 2009 at 4:53 am
Outstanding news!
April 17th, 2009 at 4:54 am
That is fantastic! I’m glad she is home safely and that myself and the rest of the Internet masses had such an impact!
April 17th, 2009 at 5:15 am
So glad to hear it!
April 17th, 2009 at 6:06 am
[...] statement from Fisna: The investigator said in all his years on the force he has never seen or had this kind of [...]
April 17th, 2009 at 6:35 am
Glad that she is alright and home!!
April 17th, 2009 at 7:58 am
You all tell me or give me anything I can take to the Sheriff’s dept in order to help find a missing person and i will be more than HAPPY to do it.
I am adding a tab on my Fallen Heroes L A.org website to put pictures of as many missing persons as we can. I am working with webmaster on it now.
Again if I can be of help with jennifer let me know. I am a father of 7 girls. I also have a Jennifer.
April 17th, 2009 at 10:06 am
I feel for your ordeal. However, if this was a runaway situation, then law enforcement WAS right. LE resources are limited; if this was indeed NOT an abduction, enticement, or life-threatening situation, the family should be responsible for expenses. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but there are consequences for every action. Better for the girl to learn that early than late.
April 17th, 2009 at 10:46 am
[...] Update: Frank Frisina’s niece safe. [...]
April 17th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Hurray!!!! I am so glad that Jennifer is home safe and sound.
Congratulations, Internet!! We did what paid law enforcement could not. While Nexus is correct that law enforcement resources are limited, the allocation of those limited resources is all-important in matters like this one, and that is where the problem can lie. Bully for international public opinion landing like a ton of bricks on the local law enforcement agencies in this matter! I’m glad the internet helped find her safe.
April 17th, 2009 at 11:16 am
that is awesome news…
April 17th, 2009 at 11:24 am
I don’t want to come off like an apologist for shoddy law enforcement. And I’m glad for the positive outcome. However, if the girl decided to run away, play a prank, or simply (for whatever reason) voluntarily “disappear”, then I do believe there should be some punitive action taken against her and/or her family. This is a huge waste of resources, time, and energy for a bad decision this girl made. Yes, I understand she is a child…but at 14, she really should know better.
Yes, allocation of limited resources is all-important. Now go tell that to the true victims of crimes who did not get the full attention they deserved because of public pressure to find a girl who (from all appearances) made a mistake. Again, I feel for Frank and his family. The girl, however, was selfish.
Law enforcement got lambasted but good at the beginning of this situation. With this outcome, they are owed an apology.
April 17th, 2009 at 11:29 am
Nexus – I agree with you in principle…. but how the police first handled this was horrible. We have OR had NO evidence that she was a runaway. All we had was a cop who arrived the night she was missing… after being to 2 runaway calls… he was convinced she was a runaway before hearing everything. Even when presented with things that did not make sense.
My niece took no clothes, no money, no cell phone charger. We had a person in NJ telling us that he got a scary phone call from her where she was telling a person to STOP and was cursing. There are certain other clues that should have alerted the police that this was a possible kidnapping or she was being held against her will. There were no signs whatsoever she ran away… Everything pointed to something bad.
There are still things we are trying to piece together and once I know the truth about everything… I will make it known.
BUt… even IF we find out she was a runaway.. She is 14 years old. What needs to happen is they need to have a law that makes running away a crime. Habitual runaways would be put into a juvenile program. Unless of course there is some proof of parental abuse. Pigeon holing a child into one category when everything pointed to something else… was and IS wrong.
I’ll tell ya this.. if it turns out to be a runaway thing.. There is no way I am giving the city one damn dime.. We did all the work.
April 17th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Just this morning, driving to work, I had a fleeting thought about your niece and hoped it for the best, while expecting the worst. This is wonderful news.
Until this incident, I had never heard of you, but as the father of a two-year-old girl, I immediately knew you, and I don’t think I can ever appreciate the mixture of emotions you felt during the time she was missing. I’m not so proud that I won’t admit that I am sitting in my office tearing up thinking of how your family must feel to have your niece back home.
As an aside, am I the only parent who would put a tracking chip subdermally into his/her child(ren) if the technology were available. I’ve mentioned such to my wife before, who, like most good wives, does not take me too seriously and points out that using a chip would take away the girl’s Constitutionally granted freedoms. To that I reply, “Screw civil liberties; they don’y apply to my child until she is 18 and then, I’ll only grudgingly allow them to apply.” I don’t know, maybe it is a “father being overly protective toward his daughter” thing.
Finally, there appears to be a subset of humanity–probably childless–who side with the police and their response. I, a white male, have never trusted the police and the reasoning behind taking or not taking action, but even if I wasn’t, I don’t think there is a parent who would not find the inaction upfront inappropriate. The reasoning the officer provided What line of demarcation must a missing child–not an adult, who society assumes knows what is best for itself, but a child–cross before the local police decide it is worth the time and money to make an effort? If my daughter were to go missing, would her being only two trigger police activity than a missing three year old and the three year old before a child aged five? No one will say it in polite company, but does a less photogenic missing child engender less concern than a painted-up Jon Benet Ramsey, or a missing biracial child, like my daughter, compared to a missing Caucasian child?
Finally, expecting reimbursement of expenses after a non-missing missing child turns up makes no sense. Are things so tight that local police forces are working out of a sense of altruism? I appreciate that if there has been a hoax played the perpetuation of which costs a police force time and money, the perpetuators should make repay the police, etc. for resources. However, a broad decree that the guardians of a found runaway child should repay costs because the child was not harmed does not make sense, considering that all too often the runaway child becomes a victim. In my world, preventative medicine is cheaper overall than medical care after a person becomes symptomatic; likewise finding a runaway child is cheaper upfront than paying for the costs of what happens to that child after leaving.
April 17th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Frank…Just as I’m sure there was little/no evidence she was a runaway, there was likely just as little evidence that she was a victim of crime. The vast majority of these cases are probably runaway cases. I understand that wouldn’t make me feel any better if this was my child…but maybe, in retrospect, you can understand how LE might have seen it. Again, not to make apologies for them if you were treated poorly…but, now that this is over, it’s time to start taking a harder look at your niece rather than continuing to blame LE.
I said my prayers for you and your family. I did not know of you prior to this; clearly, you are making a great effort to provide stability to your young relatives. That’s to be commended. Families can be fragile and the teenage years can be hard for some. Best of luck to you and I look forward to hearing about what really happened.
April 17th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Nexus with all due respect… you don’t have the complete facts. I am not going to provide all the information I do have as I do not want to tip my hand.
As far as I or any of my family is concerned… there WAS PLENTY of evidence of foul play. What held us up was the initial reaction of the responding officer making his OWN mind up about the situation. He is NOT a detective NOR is he an expert in child endangerment cases.
Just knowing that a person talked to her at a moment of of last phone contact and felt to his core that she was in trouble. What was said on the phone should have been enough. What would it have taken? Her to scream I am being raped or hurt? Wasn’t “stop!stop!” and a hangup , then 2 more consecutive hangups ENOUGH?
I understand what you are trying to say.. but your insinuations are just pissing me off. My family has been in this country for 300 years and to my knowledge has never needed the assistance of law enforcement or any other government agency. I think we have paid into the system enough to get a little cooperation from our paid officials. And YOU do not have all the facts… so until you do…. save your criticism of myself or my child.
Lokemper: I agree with you wholeheartedly about GPS tracking my children. I worry though that if they were to choose a common place of implant OR there was a device that could pinpoint it’s location… Those children that did end up lost… are now at risk at some sort of mutilation. Maybe some sort of device that can be placed within a shirt button, cell phone, etc..
April 17th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Nexus, you’ve made your point. Now shut up and be happy the girl is safe. You’re pissing off every parent here.
Lokemper & Frank, as to the GPS idea, I am all for it with caveats. Yes, this has constitutional ramifications that would have to be dealt with, but such a chip can have in it far more information than just the locator: medical information can be encoded there, as can a criminal record of public interest (such as a sex offender), and the list goes on and on.
Now that Jennifer’s situation is happily resolved, I will point out that Nexus is correct in the point made that Jennifer is not the only missing child. Others remain missing. Had a microchip been implanted (shirt buttons fall off; cell phones get left behind) that had a GPS signal, the children would be trackable to within only a few feet of their locations.
It’s a knotty problem; parents know the result, but the guaranteed freedoms in this country are important, too, and implanting a functional microchip may very well interfere with those freedoms.
Anyway, Frank, that’s all academic. I’m really glad for you, Jennifer, and your family that Jennifer is home safe and sound.
April 17th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Frank…you’re right, I do not have all the facts. I apologize. I suppose I am the “subset” that Lokemper is referring to. For the record, though, I am male (but not white) and I have a biracial child. When news of your niece’s disappearance hit, as a fellow parent, my heart sank. I felt terrible. When she turned up OK, I felt great relief…but also admit I felt anger for having to go through this, even as a stranger, at the possibility that this was the act of a misguided kid. Which ultimately, it really appeared to be. Obviously, her safe return is the most important thing…but having been emotionally invested in this, having friends/family in LE, hopefully you can understand why I felt as I did.
Of course, there are other possibilities and I will not say anymore until you find out what happened and can provide the facts.
April 17th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Glad to hear Jennifer has been located and is now safe. I hope the experience wasn’t a traumatic one for her, and I hope you get all the details sorted out soon so you all can go back to a more normal life. I have two young kids myself and I was very glad to see the response and outreach for Jennifer. I hope you DO make that howto and let us spread it around to the benefit of other families in similar situations.
April 17th, 2009 at 9:07 pm
Nexus,
You are wrong. Any missing child, ANY missing child should be taken seriously. If some child ran away, is he/she at any less risk? That child is out there living somewhere without the protection of his/her parents and is vulnerable to all sorts of sleeze bags that are prowling the streets and malls looking for fresh meat?
How many kids end up living on the streets after their “friends” show them the door? Now, we have real trouble…gangs, prostitution, crime? Are you telling me that every parent that has a child that disappears has to go through a q & a by local law enforcement so that a decision can be made whether to try and find this child?? Is is worth the trouble and expense when it’s ONLY a “runaway”?
Your god damned right it is…..
If every child had the benefit of family and friends working hard to get the word out (thanks to the Internet) about their disappearance maybe there would be more Jennifers’ home sleeping in their beds tonight, instead of being forgotten about…out on the streets, and being abused by who knows who……because, after all she’s a runaway.
That could have been Jennifer…..and now it’s not.
April 17th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Please, everyone. A family that’s been under great stress needs rest and nurturance.
I’m asking us all to set aside our urges to argue about viewpoints, and let them have that peace that they need right now.
Regards, Peg
April 17th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
Peg,
Good advice…..:)
April 18th, 2009 at 6:49 am
I am so glad that your niece was found! I’m an ocean away in Ireland but I’m the same age as Jennifer and I was terrified for her because, especially where I live, anything could have happened. Heard about the situation from Neil Gaiman’s Twitter and then proceeded to link the blog you made to the “influential” people I follow on Twitter. Give her a hug from me, will you? This story made me feel a whole plethora of things. Just glad she’s found now. =)
April 18th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
I am glad she is safe! Best to you and your family, after such an ordeal.
April 19th, 2009 at 8:13 am
Nexus… I thought of a million things to say to you to make you realize that you should just shut your mouth but instead of dragging myself into your sheltered ignorant life, I’d rather just let you know that I think you’re an idiot and you should just back away from commenting any further on my goddaughter. As Frank already mentioned, you do not have all the facts… so back off.
April 19th, 2009 at 9:24 am
I say again, please – let the Frisinas rest. The satisfaction gotten fighting with one another in posts here is not worth the stress that it may be causing Frank on this, his home site.
Consider what they have been through. Let them have some peace and family time.
Please, everyone. Let this site become a rant-free zone for now. They need that.
Regards, Peg
April 19th, 2009 at 10:00 am
And so it’s understood why I say let them rest – I lost a good friend in the shootings at Virginia Tech two years ago on 4-16. We did high stress from inside, then, and I remember. I want the Frisinas to have it better than we did.
There was no chance for us to have a good outcome – it was over too fast. So to have Jennifer come home safe on 4-16 of all days makes me so amazingly glad!
I can barely find words to tell you. I wish everyone could get their loved ones back safe.
That’s why I truly hope we can let the focus, here, be on the good news. Let
them breathe deep and hug each other. And let us feel the relief of a much
desired outcome, come true. That’s rare. Let’s let the good of it sink in, OK?
Thanks, Peg
April 19th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Peg,
What a lovely posting! The parallel of the date of Jennifer’s return with the date of the VA Tech tragedy had not occurred to me.
I hope that your recovery from that terrible day two years ago is progressing apace. It, and your lost friend, will always live with you in memory; in time, may the memory become more and more one of your friend and less and less one of his or her death.
Peace.
April 19th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Hello Nancy,
Thanks. It helped when I started donating to Operation Smile in his memory. Sending a new smile out into the world in his honor comforts me. And
somewhere in India, there’s a child now whose cleft palate is healing, and
they will smile…. this helps.
Don’t want to make this about me, though. Just want people to understand
why I’m asking for rest for them.
All the Best, Peg
April 19th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
So, had she run away?
April 20th, 2009 at 12:00 am
she did NOT run away, and we are not releasing any more information at this time.
April 20th, 2009 at 12:01 am
[...] I normally would have a lot to say or a few suggested places you can stick it, but I think this says it [...]
April 20th, 2009 at 2:36 am
[...] out through a variety of blogs and social networks, and yesterday saw a happy ending as the girl was returned to [...]
April 26th, 2009 at 4:14 am
[...] located on April 16. She wasn’t the victim of a kidnapping. It appears that she was indeed a runaway: On behalf of my family I have to thank each and everyone who helped from the bottom of my heart. [...]