MISSEY SMITH: When your child is missing, you don't eat, you don't sleep. Greg and I were just running on pure adrenalin trying to find Kelsey. Where was our child? How do we bring her home?
When Kelsey went missing, I immediately called our cell phone provider and asked them, "Please ping her phone," because we figured if we could find the phone, we could find Kelsey. To ping a phone was to send an active signal to the phone, and the phone says, "Here I am." The police were contacting them. There was even a subpoena issued by the District Attorney. And all my cell phone company kept saying was, "We can't do what you're asking." But what they could have done is looked where her cell phone had made contact, and they didn't even do that. So that led to 4 days of us trying to figure out where was Kelsey?
And when they finally released the information, Kelsey's body was found in about 45 minutes.
It just seemed unbelievable to me that when police needed to be able to find someone, they couldn't. And I just said, "We've got to change that."
Kelsey's Law started in 2009 here in Kansas. And other states heard about the law, and it has grown to 23 states now. When Kelsey's Law passed, you have this concept in your mind about how law should work, and to find out that it does work is just phenomenal.
One of the first cases that it was ever used on here in Kansas was a baby that was recovered. She'd been kidnapped here locally, and her parents' cell phone was in the car, so they were able to recover her within an hour. [crying] That baby is home and alive because my baby isn't. Kelsey really is making a difference.
One of the things that Greg and I talked about after Kelsey was killed was, "What would Kelsey do?" And our focus was, "She would make it better for others." So that's what we're doing. And our motto of our foundation is "Together we will make a difference," and with her, that's what we're doing. We are truly making a difference.
