Jefferson Award goes to Tommy Foundation founder
May 25, 2005
By: Ron Brown
Phoenix, Oregon
For the past several weeks we've brought you stories of people who provide outstanding service to children. The Jefferson Awards acknowledge 12 people whose service has made a real difference to our region's young people.
This is the story of a Phoenix woman who turned a family tragedy into life-saving service for other families nationwide.
Vicky Kelley says, "To loose a child, there's no greater emotional, psychological, physical or spiritual trauma that you can go through. But our hope now is that not another family will ever go through having a missing child."
Vicky Kelly knows first hand what it's like to have a child disappear, and the frustration of trying to find him. Her 17-year old son Tommy vanished in 1999, and was not found for more than a year. A few of his bones were finally located in an orchard near Phoenix. As a result of she and her husband's experience, they formed the Tommy Foundation to help parents deal with the loss of a child, and to show them how to search, and to cope.
She says, "When Tommy's remains were recovered, we made a vow to be a voice for missing children and child safety. We had the choice to either let it destroy us and become reactive, or become proactive." In May of 2001, on National Missing Children's Day the Oregon legislature passed the Tommy laws and they formed the Tommy Foundation.
The "Tommy" laws require police to be trained in how to search for missing children. Jackson County Sheriff Mike Winters says Vicky Kelly's voice and advocacy is behind his department's move to implement the "A Child Is Missing" phone notification system he credits with finding a missing autistic 4 year old near Rogue River recently.
Winters says, "It's well documented that the first 3 days is very critical to dump all your resources into an area and try and locate any children that're missing. And it's been Vicky's mission to get law enforcment officers to the classes and get them informed and educated so that they can better respond to these emergencies."
It's estimated that every day in the United States almost 2000 children are either lost or abducted. That's better than one a minute! That's a lot of grieving parents who many times don't know what to do and where to turn for help. And for her help in helping parents, we honor Vicky Kelly with a Jefferson Award.
Vicki Kelly is presented the Jefferson Award in Washington DC from OR Sen. Gordon Smith
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