High Schoolers Help 'Inform Families First'

It’s every parent’s nightmare. “I’ll be home by midnight, Mom.” And now it’s 3 a.m. A parent’s mind inevitably turns to disaster.

For the past five years, an statewide effort that began in Manatee County is offering a system to eliminate uncertainty for parents and others. It’s called “To Inform Families First,” and it is receiving a big boost from the Manatee High School Key Club, which is marketing and promoting the effort throughout the state.

The objective is simple. People sign up on a website with their identification, and fill in the name of who should be notified in case of an accident or injury. The information is available only to authorized law enforcement agencies.

Florida was the first state to adopt the “Inform Families First” system, and three others have followed – Illinois, Ohio and Colorado. Under the old notification system, it could take hours for a police agency to identify the victim and then locate a family member.

The effort began after the death of teenager in Palmetto during 2005. Tiffiany Olson was killed in a motorcycle accident. Because Tiffiany’s address on her driver's license was incorrect, Palmetto Police had no way to contact the family. It took six hours to unscramble the details before Tiffiany’s mother Christine wOlson as told by police her daughter was in the morgue.

“No mother should have to learn that her child died six and a half hours after the fact,” Olson says on the organization’s website. Working with local police and Florida Rep. Bill Galvano, Olson helped design a program to notify families in case of an emergency.

The Manatee High School Key Club, which includes many young drivers, decided to take on the mission of informing organizations, other high schools, groups and even families about the statewide effort.

“Last week they spoke to the Kiwanis’ Club luncheon,” said Karen Mahlios, the vice president of the “Inform” organization. “The Pirates [baseball team] heard about it, and they’re looking to help, too.”

The Key Club is not only doing speaking engagements but also staffing booths at civic events.

“They went to the Bay Fest on Anna Maria Island last month,” Mahlios said. And on Tuesday the MHS Key Club will make a presentation to the Manatee County Commission.

Mahlios has heard horror stories for other families and said that the only wat to prevent them from repeating is to make sure the authorities know how to contact family members.

“It took six hours for the police to reach this family and say their daughter was sent to the hospital after a car wreck,” she said about Olson's story. “But they didn’t know which hospital.”

More than a million Floridians have signed up for the program. At the state offices where new driver licenses are issued, inspectors are required to ask new drivers if they would like to sign up. The program is totally voluntary.

If you’d like to participate, go to www.ToInformFamiliesFirst.org and look for “Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.”

That’s all the Manatee High Key Club wants you to do. Go on the site and register. You could save someone you love hours of worry and grief.