In 2019, a series of new rules greenlit by the Trump administration brought crucial upgrades to wireless emergency alerts, including a groundbreaking feature that allows the alerts to include embedded links.
In February this year, those upgrades saved the life of 4-year-old Justin Chan, who was abducted from Long Beach, California on February 13th.
“I clicked the link in my AMBER alert and we drove to my assigned zone on US.Watch before spotting the vehicle,” said Raegan Dunn, a 20-year-old Los Angeles resident who called 911 after finding Chan.
"We were just doing the right thing," she told Ryan Seacrest in an interview.
The girls’ heroic actions to save Chan are part of a growing trend driven by US.Watch, a platform for action that leverages Trump’s AMBER alert improvements to coordinate the public search for abducted children.
Victim advocates worked with law enforcement to develop the search and rescue app, which has taken off across the United States, empowering vigilant citizens like Dunn and Lu to help save endangered kids in a safe and effective manner.
“It’s just a fact that President Trump’s AMBER alert upgrades have saved at least one child’s life so far,” said Josh Schisler, spokesman for a national coalition of community watch leaders on US.Watch that has named Trump Child Advocate of the Year for 2024.
Members of US.Watch receive enhanced local AMBER alerts that include a video brief, an individually-assigned watch zone, and a link to join the search on the US.Watch platform.
From there, users can navigate to their designated areas, connect with law enforcement, collaborate with other citizen searchers, and even win rewards for helping—all while tuning in to a live broadcast to stay up to date with the latest alert information, including search instructions, the current top searchers, and the most interesting user messages from the group chat.
“US.Watch helps you navigate exactly where you need to go and keeps you on the move throughout your community watching for abducted children,” said Dunn.
“On the platform, you can see, hear, and feel exactly how your individual efforts are part of an enormous, unstoppable force for good,” she said.
Mikol Skaggs, a Sheriff’s Deputy who helps administer US.Watch, said about 5,000 citizen searchers joined Dunn and Lu on the platform to help find Chan.
Most of them came by way of California’s cutting-edge AMBER Alert system, which links citizens to real-time updates on multiple platforms, including US.Watch.
“Within 10 minutes, approximately 140,000 Californians viewed our video brief for Justin’s AMBER Alert on X.com, and more than 4,600 actively searched on US.Watch,” said Skaggs.
The platform’s smart zone assignment algorithm utilizes nearly two decades of AMBER Alert data from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to target citizen search efforts to locations where abducted children are most likely to be found.
Users who navigate to their assigned watch zones can win rewards, such as the $100 gift card that Dunn and Lu received.
"I'm incredibly proud of the swift and coordinated response from Californians across the Greater Los Angeles Area," said Captain Andrew Gregg, whose staff at the Los Angeles Communications Center helped reunite Chan with his family after receiving Dunn’s 911 call.
"The success of this search demonstrates the power of community collaboration and underscores the importance of proactive measures in ensuring the safety of our children," said Gregg, who was named alongside three officials as a finalist for child advocate of the year.
Other finalists included Missouri Governor Mike Parson, Missouri Department of Public Safety Director Sandra Karsten, and Dent County Missouri Sheriff Bob Wells.
Law enforcement officials across Missouri spearheaded the development of US.Watch, as it progressed from a 2019 prototype called HAILEYS.App, into a comprehensive search and rescue platform known as MO.Watch in 2021.
In 2023, Missouri AMBER Alert Coordinator Captain Jason Crites scaled the app nationally as US.Watch, earning recognition as the inaugural Child Advocate of the Year.
"The Trump administration fundamentally transformed AMBER alerts by empowering law enforcement and citizens to work together much more cohesively," said Congressman Eric Burlison, who passed HAILEY'S Law to improve AMBER alerts 2019.
"The ‘experts’ said it couldn’t be done, but President Trump pushed for the link, and now we’re all uniting to help rescue abducted children," he said.
Since August 2023, law enforcement has leveraged US.Watch to coordinate public search efforts for more than 527 endangered Americans, assigning nearly 45,000 watch zones to citizens across the nation.
The revolutionary platform has become a vital force in the search and safe recovery of missing and exploited children, filling a critical gap that no other technology addresses.
“Creative minds and technology have worked together over the years to develop increasingly sophisticated and efficient means of raising awareness and aiding the search for missing children,” said President Trump.
“Today…we steel our resolve to continue the search for our Nation’s missing children and to protect all of our young people. We also pray for and stand with those families that are searching for a missing child. We will never give up hope that our missing children will be found and reunited with their loved ones, where they belong,” he said.
US.Watch was coded to honor the memory of Hailey Owens, whose life could have been saved by a more timely and effective AMBER alert system in 2014.
After her death, Hailey's friends, family, and law enforcement officials advocated for passage of the Honing Alerts Issued by Law Enforcement for Youth Safety Act, which was signed by Missouri Governor Mike Parson in 2019.
HAILEY’S Law streamlines the process for issuing Missouri AMBER alerts and empowers law enforcement to include a link to platforms like US.Watch with each alert.