Why There's a Jimmy Ryce Center for Victims of Predatory Abduction?
Jimmy Ryce's mother gave birth to Samuel James "Jimmy" Ryce when she was 43, never having been pregnant before. Here is Jimmy in his christening outfit with his proud parents, Claudine Dianne Ryce and Donald Theodore Ryce, Jr., his brother Donald Theodore "Ted" Ryce, III and his sister Martha Elizabeth Ryce, who were respectively 9 and 7 when Jimmy was born September 26, 1985.
Don acquired full custody of Martha and Ted when he divorced his first wife. As Claudine tells it, "We were a family of five!"
Jimmy's parents formed the 501(c)(3) charity -- The Jimmy Ryce Center for Victims of Predatory Abduction-- in 1996 to honor their 9-year-old son Jimmy who was murdered on September 11, 1995, by a sexual predator who abducted him from his school bus stop at gun point. Jimmy's mother says, "We dedicate our time and energy placing free AKC bloodhounds with law enforcement because we know Jimmy would never want another child to cry 'Mama, Daddy, somebody come help me,' and nobody comes."
Jimmy's mother says, "I know Jimmy would want me to teach other children how to escape abduction and molestation. That's why I created Jimmy Ryce's Great Escape Maneuvers in 1998 and placed them on the jimmyryce.org website. On the website front page, click on Escape to find out how real kids in every state regularly escape abduction and sexual assault by playing one or more of Jim's GEMs. A Gem, by the way, is a marble used in the child's marble game to strike out other marbles.
The 3-Month Search for Jimmy Ryce
On a business trip to central Florida with her husband Don Ryce, Claudine called home Monday, September 11, 1995, around 3:30 in the afternoon to make sure the 16-year-old Rotary exchange student from Thailand was having her first piano lesson. The piano teacher said, "She is doing fine, but Jimmy is not home yet for his lesson."
"Something's wrong!" Jimmy's mother exclaimed. "He should have been home fifteen minutes ago. He always comes straight home from his school bus stop."
A half hour later when Jimmy's daddy Don returned to the motel, Claudine was packed up ready to drive back home. In tears, she said, "Someone's taken Jimmy."
As they made the three-hour trip home, Don called home and asked the young man hired to stay with Jimmy and Jimmy's 18-year-old brother to walk to Jimmy's school bus stop and to his friends' houses nearby and see if they could find Jimmy or his bookbag. He also called the Miami Dade Sheriff's Office to report Jimmy missing as Jimmy lived in unincorporated Dade County between South Miami and Homestead, Florida.
When the Florida Highway Patrol stopped the Ryces as they sped home, Claudine jumped out and almost got shot by scaring the patrolman, crying "We have to get home. Our son has been kidnapped. Please write the ticket quickly." After Don let the patrolman talk to the officers who were already at Jimmy's home, the patrolman graciously did not write a ticket, saying "I guess I would be racing home too, if my son were abducted, but for your own and others safety, try not to exceed the speed limit."
From the gitgo, the Ryces knew their son Jimmy would never run away. One of Jimmy's friends summed up what everyone who knew Jimmy thought. When asked by the detectove whether Jimmy might have run away, his friend said, "No way! He's happy at home. He has everything he wants. Jimmy is a genius, not an idiot!"
Equally ludicrous was the idea that Jimmy was taken for custodial reasons. Don and Claudine were Jimmy's biological parents. They were not thinking of divorce, and all the grandparents were dead.
Sharing your gut feeling with law enforcement about what has happened to your child is one of the most important initial things parents can do to help find their child. Where to look and what to do depends upon whether the child was abducted or ran away.
Even though the only explanation for his disappearance left was that Jimmy had been abducted, the media was not notified until almost 24 hours after Jimmy vanished. Despite its institutional experience in handling kidnapping cases, the F.B.I. was not called in, though an agent in Homestead, Florida, came to Jimmy's home some days later when he heard on the news about Jimmy's disappearance. It was days before Crimestoppers announced a reward for information leading to finding Jimmy and/or his abductor.
Although a lot of law enforcement departments in 1995 still refused to look for a missing person of any age for 24- to 48-hours after the person went missing, under Federal law there was no waiting period before a search for a child under 18 could begin. To the Miami-Dade Sheriff Department's credit, when the Ryces got home around 8, there were patrol cars cruising the neighborhood and a helicopter circling with a spotlight.
Unfortunately, saving an abducted child's life depends upon whether what is done is what is most effective thing to do at that time, not whether it is well intended.
Precious hours and days were lost while law enforcement tried to figure out what to do. Instead of bringing in a scent-discriminating bloodhound to trail Jimmy's scent from the last place he was known to be-- his school bus stop on the corner, instead of making a grid search of the mile or two around the bus stop, instead of searching 24/7 for Jimmy, instead of running his picture on all networks in the state, one of the patrol officers told the Ryces, "Everyone should try to get some sleep. It's been my experience that missing kids are usually back by morning."
Jimmy's picture was overnighted to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. However, it was not placed on its website until 30 days later based on its then first-in-first-up policy for posting missing children's pictures. The advo card showing Jimmy's face and plight did not go out until the day before Halloween, over six weeks after he was taken.
Days after Jimmy disappeared the Miami Herald ran Jimmy's story and picture in the local section; that's the B section. Because the Miami Herald and the Sun Sentinel in Ft. Lauderdale and all the networks ran Jimmy's picture during the first week, Jimmy's parents thought everyone in the country was looking for Jimmy, like they looked for the Lindbergh baby and Pattie Hearst.
Weeks after Jimmy was taken, the Ryces received a call from a police department in central Florida. The officer said, "we just heard a little boy is missing from south Florida. Could you fax us a picture?"
It was months before the Ryces found out only stories in the A section of the newspaper are distributed nationally, and even though Jimmy's picture had been showed by every local television network, it was transmitted only as far out as the footprint of the local stations extended, a 100 or so miles.
Jimmy's picture did not appear in the A section of the Miami Herald until the day after Jimmy's dismembered body was found. Then, when there was no longer a need for millions of eyes to know his features and his plight and help look for him, his picture appeared under the mast head on the front page.
In the first weeks after Jimmy disappeared, the only national distribution of Jimmy's picture was John Walsh's showing Jimmy's picture in his baseball cap on America's Most Wanted, the first Saturday after Jimmy was taken on Monday.
Claudine discovered she could not post a reward poster in the Miami Federal building where she used to work. Although post offices in Homestead and Miami initially allowed the $100,000 reward poster on the bulletin board with pictures of America's most wanted criminals and lost dog posters, only a few weeks later Claudine discovered the posters in the trash cans. When she asked why they had been torn down, as Jimmy was still missing, she was told an internal memorandum had been circulated stating that the post office was not authorized to hang missing children posters.
Equally shocking was the little real help most state missing children information clearinghouses gave, and most missing children non-profit organizations offered. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the Vanished, Child Search, the International Center for the Search and Recovery of Missing Children, the Missing Children Help Center were wonderful exceptions.
One NPO required a dozen certified copies of Jimmy's birth certificate, even though this was not a custodial taking. This was an obvious effort to discourage anyone from requesting the organization to spend money and effort to distribute Jimmy's posters and otherwise help in the search. Almost every NPO had a lengthy intake form. At least a half dozen were still unfilled out when Jimmy's dismembered remains were found three months later on December 9th.
The Ryces came to believe that a lot of missing children non-profits existed to collect salaries for their staff rather than to use all or most of their donated funds to fulfill their charitable mission. Some hesitated to get involved in the search: initially on the theory that Jimmy was probably a runaway as nobody saw him snatched, and later, as the weeks passed, on the assumption it would be a waste of effort as Jimmy was probably already dead.
The sad truth was that, except for a few missing children clearinghouses and non-profits and some individuals and businesses in the South Florida community and scattered individuals elsewhere, Jimmy's parents felt they were on their own. As Jimmy's father put it: "The problem isn't that the system doesn't work. The problem is that there really isn't a system to effectively recover kidnapped kids." The day after Jimmy's 10th birthday on September 26th, when the first reward expired, Jimmy's father cried out to local and national politicians and lawmakers to do more to bring our missing children home.
For three months Don and Claudine Ryce did everything they could think of to find their son. There was not a hour that went by that they did not worry: "Is Jimmy in pain? Is he hungry? Does he know that no matter what he is made to do to survive that it is not his fault? Does he know we will always love him and never quit trying to find him?"
The anxiety and fear was so great sometimes Claudine thought her skull would burst open from the pressure. Her heart was actually sore from the stress and tension.
Don had to find other attorneys to take over his clients' cases, as all he could think about was how to find Jimmy. With no money coming in, Don and Claudine were lucky to have a purchase-money mortgage on their home and an obliging prior owner who declared a three-month moratorium on mortgage payments.
Good neighbors and churches scheduled someone to bring in a hot meal each night.
Don and Claudine Ryce began speaking out for children abducted by sexual predators during the three-months they searched for their 9-year-old son. They gathered over 100,000 signatures on petitions requesting then-Florida Governor Chiles to authorize the posting of pictures of criminally abducted children in state buildings, state parks, and state toll booths. Within weeks Jimmy’s picture was posted in all the toll booths in Florida for people driving through to see.
While searching for Jimmy, the Ryces spearheaded a petition drive asking then-President Clinton to issue an executive order authorizing pictures of missing children to be posted in Federal buildings and national parks. The Ryces were invited by President Clinton to attend the signing of this executive memorandum in the Oval Office in January of 1996. However, until language was added giving children believed abducted by sexual predators priority in manpower and publicity, they refused to attend, as the public needs to understand the lives of children taken by sexual predators are measured in hours and days, not years. Everyone knows there has to be special rules and procedures for emergency room cases. As you can see, the language was added as we attended the signing ceremony in the Oval Office.
After the eye-opening experience of searching for their son, the Ryces, both attorneys, were determined to remedy some of the problems they had encountered. At first, they tried to work through existing non-profit organizations. After repeated frustrations, having more to do with competitions between non-profits for credit and funding than rational disagreements over what might work, Jimmy's parents realized they needed to create a non-profit to help parents, law enforcement, politicians, and the communiity know what they can do to improve our chances of bringing more predatorily abducted children home alive.
The Jimmy Ryce Center for Victims of Predatory Abduction, Inc. was created and recognized as a 501(c)(3) non-profit in June of 1996.
The Jimmy Ryce Center for Victims of Predatory Abduction's mission is to make the public more aware of the dangers predatory abductions pose and to develop the best procedures to follow when a determination is made that a child has, more likely than not, been predatorily abducted.
An abduction is predatory, whether the abductor is a stranger, a neighbor, or a relative, whether the child is abducted by force or guile, if the child is in imminent danger of rape and/or death.
When Jimmy was reported missing, Miami-Dade entered Jimmy in the National Crime Information Center/NCIC as a juvenile. That means Jimmy's face and terrible peril were buried under hundreds of thousands of runaways and older children. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children listed Jimmy as a LEM, Lost, Endangered, or otherwise Missing, because nobody was absolutely sure Jimmy had been abducted.
The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention/OJJDP of the U.S. Department of Justice invited the Ryces to a brain storming session about ways to more effectively search for kidnapped kids. It was, then, the Ryces began, in earnest, their fight to have predatory abductions given the priority in manpower and publicity they require if kidnaped kids are to be found, and their lives saved.
They are still trying to convince more law enforcement departments that, within a hour of a child's being reported missing, a preliminary determination should be made as to whether the disappearance is more likely to be a predatory abduction than a custodial taking or a runaway situation. This determination should be entered into NCIC and periodically revisited as more information becomes available during the investigation and search.
Despite Jimmy's parents, his brother, and his caretaker taking lie detector tests showing they had nothing to do with Jimmy's disappearance, despite Jimmy's friends, school teacher, classmates, his mother's family members, his piano teacher, the pool man, all saying Jimmy was happy in his home and at school, Jimmy's features remained buried in NCIC under the heap of runaways. The day his dismembered body was found, Jimmy Ryce's name and picture was removed from NCIC, never having been classified as an abduction.
In 1996, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement/FLDE Commissioner created the Missing Children Information Clearinghouse/MCIC Advisory Board and appointed the Ryces founding members. Both still serve on the Advisory Board. Don Ryce is in his second 2-year term as Chair. Meeting four times a year, the Advisory Board has come up with many prevention and recovery ideas, which have been implemented and today make children safer from sexual predators than they were when Jimmy was kidnapped.
Florida was the first state to have statewide Amber Alerts.
Florida was the first state to develop Child Abduction Response Teams/CARTs. At the end of 2005, the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention/OJJDP, adopted the Florida CART model for the country.
Through its CHIP program, parents whose babies are born in Florida hospitals can choose to have their baby's DNA taken. The parents retain possession of the sample. If the child ever goes missing, it can be used to identify a baby who has grown up not knowing his/her real name, to identify remains, and, most importantly, to find the abducted child by comparing the baby's DNA to DNA found in a car or house in body fluids, such as urine, blood, muscus.
The Advisory Board member from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles had its department issue laminated ID cards for children 5 and over, which can be picked up at any Florida driver license office if proper primary and secondary identification are provided.
The Advisory Board member from the Florida Outdoor Advertising Association has ever-changing billboards with big pictures of still missing children.
Jimmy's mother Claudine, working with Pat Rutherford and Lee Condon of the FDLE Missing Children Information Clearinghouse staff, wrote a brochure for kids and parents entitled "Safe Passage to and from School A Guide How to Be Safe!" It states that even if someone points a gun in a child's face the child should still run to the nearest safe place, as, unlike a drive-by-shooting, a sadistic pedophile does not get his jollies by shooting a kid before he has done whatever he wants to to the child.
In 2007, the Florida Department of Education member on the Advisory Board and his department created the brochure "Are We There Yet? Staying Safe between Home and School."
In 1996 Congress created the Jimmy Ryce Law Enforcement Training Center/JRLETC, which is administered by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Alexandria, Virginia. Congress provides annual funding to bring sheriffs and police chiefs, policy-makers, to Alexandria where over a 3-day-weekend they learn strategies for finding abducted children, which have worked in prior cases. When they leave, they carry away a model protocol for them to customize which details what the standard operating procedures will be in their jurisdiction when a child is abducted by a sexual predator.
The Florida legislature in 1997 made the second Monday in September, when Jimmy was taken, Florida Missing Children's Day. At this ceremony, children who have saved themselves and adults who have rescued children from sexual predators are recognized.
The Florida legislature also passed the Jimmy Ryce Involuntary Civil Commitment Act of 1998 to keep the worst sexual offenders civilly committed and locked away from their potential victims even after their penal sentence is served. Claudine Ryce prepared the first draft for this legislation after reading the U.S. Supreme Court case upholding the constitutionality of a similar Illinois law. She was able to incorporate the easier to prove civil standard for commitment in the 1998 Florida Act rather than the criminal standard, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the Illinois statute had used.
Claudine and her husband Don worked on a parent’s survival guide with four other families to let law enforcement, parents, and the community know what they can do to help find an abducted child. The 93-page paperback, entitled ''When Your Child Goes Missing,'' was released on National Missing Children’s Day, May 25, 1998. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention at the U.S. Department of Justice sent the booklet to over 18,000 police and sheriff departments across the country. It is now available in both English and Spanish.
In 1998, the Jimmy Ryce Center for Victims of Predatory Abduction began several projects, which continue to this day and will continue as long as the Jimmy Ryce Center has sufficient funding from donations to continue to buy bloodhounds, host the jimmyryce.org website, and speak out on ways to better protect our children from sexual predators.
As Executive Director of the Jimmy Ryce Center, Claudine Ryce set up the Jimmy Ryce Bloodhound Network™. To date the charity has given free to law enforcement across the country hundreds of AKC bloodhounds to find missing children.
As Executive Director of the Jimmy Ryce Center, Claudine has written a scent collection and preservation brochure for first responders and crime scene specialists and a scent discrimination and trailing manual for handlers and instructors. To read these training materials, go to the Support section of this jimmyryce.org website, and click on Bloodhound and then which manual you want to read.
In March of 2000, Claudine coordinated a multi-day, field-training meet in Sebring, Florida, which over 60 handlers and their bloodhounds attended. She compiled three video tapes showing experienced bloodhound trainers from across the country answering the questions sheriffs, police chiefs, and/or canine supervisors frequently ask when deciding whether to make a bloodhound part of its canine team.
In light of the Jimmy Ryce Center for Victims of Predatory Abductio's unrelenting effort to place bloodhounds in Florida to find missing children, the FDLE Commissioner presented Claudine Ryce with the framed Resolution of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Criminal Justice Standards and Training, signed November 6, 2003, resolving that officers handling trailing dogs could satisfy continuing education requirements by attending trailing meets.
On September 10, 2007, Claudine told the handlers starting a trailing training meet at the Pat Thomas Law Enforcement Academy, which is part of the Tallahassee Community College system, some of the many successful finds made with bloodhounds given to law enforcement in Florida to inspire them to train their dogs to perform similar feats.
Jimmy Ryce's mother gave birth to Samuel James "Jimmy" Ryce when she was 43, never having been pregnant before. Here is Jimmy in his christening outfit with his proud parents, Claudine Dianne Ryce and Donald Theodore Ryce, Jr., his brother Donald Theodore "Ted" Ryce, III and his sister Martha Elizabeth Ryce, who were respectively 9 and 7 when Jimmy was born September 26, 1985.
Don acquired full custody of Martha and Ted when he
divorced his first wife. As Claudine tells it, "We were a
family of five!"
Jimmy's parents formed the Jimmy Ryce Center for
Victims of Predatory Abduction in 1996 to honor their
9-year-old son Jimmy who was killed on September 11,
1995, by a sexual predator who abducted him from his
school bus stop at gun point.
"I know Jimmy would never want another child to cry
'Mama, Daddy, somebody come help me,' and nobody
comes." So, the Jimmy Ryce Center gives free to law
enforcement AKC bloodhounds to find lost or abducted
kids and catch violent predators.
"I know Jimmy would want me to teach other children
how to escape abduction and molestation," Claudine says. "I try to reflect the unconditional love I felt from Jimmy to all the children who want to grow up and to grow up unmolested." In 1998, Jimmy's mother placed Jimmy Ryce's Great Escape Maneuvers, Jimmy's GEMs, on the jimmyryce.org website so that kids can learn how to escape from sexual predators. Just go to the Escape section of this website and read how kids from the state you live in have escaped being abducted and sexually assaulted.
In 1998, Claudine created Jimmy Ryce’s GEMs/Great Escape Maneuvers™ program. By studying how children were abducted, she figured out what, if anything, the child might have done to maximize his/her chances of getting away. The most important GEMs are Don't Ride Without Permission, Be Aware of Surroundings, Scream to Attract Help and Scare the Predator Away, Fight to Break Free, Run to the Nearest Safe Place, Tell an Adult What Just Happened, Call 911 ASAP to Help Catch the Predator.
Claudine writes in story form about attempted abductions reported in the media to show kids other kids daily escape from predators by playing one or more of Jimmy's GEMs. Jimmy's mother says, "Making kids more predator-smart kids makes them more predator-resistant. Each child, afterall, is his/her own last defense against a sexual predator's forcing or coaxing the child to go with him.
A gem, by the way, like an aggie, is a type of marble. If you get all your marbles in a row, you can knock the predator's hands off you.
A gem is also a precious stone. Discussing and practicing Jimmy Ryce's Great Escape Maneuvers , Jimmy's GEMs, enriches and empowers a child. Every day kids playing one or more of Jimmy Ryce's GEMs ransom themselves out of a predator's grasp.
For more detailed information on the Jimmy Ryce Center for Victims of Predatory Abduction, go to the Support section of the jimmyryce.org website and click on some of its activities have been selected from its calendars. The activities are broken down by year.
1999 Jan 22: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce attend the quarterly meeting of the F.D.L.E. Missing Children Information Clearinghouse Advisory Board in Tallahassee. Both are on the Public Awareness and Prevention, the Law Enforcement, and the Victim Advocacy committees.
Jan 25: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce speak at the Florida Sheriffs Association Mid-Winter Conference about every department’s needing at least one scent-discriminating and trailing bloodhound as part of its canine unit. The Jimmy Ryce Center has a grant from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to give an AKC bloodhound puppy to the first 30 Florida departments wanting a bloodhound. Claudine Ryce said, “Jimmy would be alive today if a well trained bloodhound had been called in immediately, as there were lots of items in his home to use as a scent article, his shoes, caps. The dog could have been started at his school bus stop, where he was last known to be. It turned out his abductor had taken him away in an old truck with Jimmy’s unique scent pouring out the open passenger window. Jimmy was just taken a mile away to an abandoned trailer. It would have been easy to get to Jimmy in time to save him from being shot as he was reported missing within a hour, and he was kept alive over 4 hours. Yet, no bloodhound was ever brought to find Jimmy, only some cadaver dogs toward the end of the first week after he went missing.
Feb 20: Miami Style III Fashion Gala, presenting the collections of Nicole Miller and Gerry Kelly, at the Bal Harbour, Florida Sheraton Beach Resort, is held to benefit the Jimmy Ryce Center. It is hosted by Miami television women anchors-- Laurie Jennings (WSVN-TV 7), Kristi Krueger (WPLG-TV 10), Ann Roberts (WFOR-TV 4), Jennifer Valoppi (WTVG-NBC 6), and Diana Franco (Telemundo), along with George Hamilton as MC. The silent auction contains paintings by R. Britto, who also designed the program cover. Claudine Ryce’s dress of black lace over light blue taffeta is by Gerry Kelly.
Mar 12: To make more effective Marco Rodriguez’ pled to the public for help in finding his 4-year-old daughter Pilar who was reported missing February 22, when her baby sitter failed to bring her back from Disney World, Don and Claudine Ryce join him at a news conference they arranged and ask him questions to enable him to show his love and fear for his missing daughter.
Apr 28: Executive Director Claudine Ryce and Board Director Don Ryce speak during National Crime Victims’ Rights Weeks on the theme Victims’ Voices Silent No More, which event is sponsored by the Office of the State Attorney of the 18th Judicial Circuit of Florida.
Sep 13: At the first annual Florida Missing Children’s Day, A Time of Remembrance, Recognition and Hope, Governor Jeb Bush assures the children in the audience that government and law enforcement officials will look far and wide for them if they go missing, and he emphasized that children who “were on this Earth for far too short a time. . . serve as an eternal reminder of why we must all work together” to find our missing children and bring them home safe. Others present are Ron Laney from the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and nearly 500 other people, including 300 school children. Awards are given to law enforcement officers and citizens who have helped protect or find children. Executive Director of the Jimmy Ryce Center for Victims of Predatory Abduction Claudine Ryce announces the Florida Trailing Team Award goes to Handler Rex Bryant from the University of West Florida Police Department and his canine partner Beaufort for finding and saving the life of an unconscious 14-year-old before he died from want of his medications and exposure. Although the Jimmy Ryce Center funds this $500 trailing team award, the winner is selected from those nominated by their departments by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Missing Children Information Clearinghouse Advisory Board, of which Don and Claudine Ryce are only two of more than a dozen members.
Sep: Executive Director Claudine Ryce and staff member Kim Turner attend Law Enforcement Bloodhound Association/LEBA training to learn about trailing techniques and identify qualified bloodhound trainers for use in upcoming trailing meet in Florida.
Oct 28-30: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce attend the State Clearinghouse/Non-Profit Organization National Conference in Austin, Texas. It is sponsored by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention of the U.S. Department of Justice, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and Fox Valley Technical College.
2000Jan 11: Executive Director Claudine Ryce talks to the Florida Police Chiefs Association in St. Augustine about the need to have a scent-discriminating bloodhound as part of the canine unit to give missing children the best chance of being found.
Jan 19: Board Director Don Ryce talks to the Department of Corrections in Cocoa Beach about its role in the implementation of the Jimmy Ryce Involuntary Civil Commitment Act of 1998.
Jan 21: Board Director Don Ryce, appointed by the Governor to the Governor’s Task Force on the implementation of the Jimmy Ryce Involuntary Civil Commitment Act of 1998, attends in Tallahassee one of a number of meetings to identify facilities for commitment and procedures for the proper implementation of the Act.
Jan 31: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce attend the F.D.L.E. Missing Children Information Clearinghouse/M.C.I.C. Advisory Board committee meeting in Tallahassee.
Feb 1: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce attend the quarterly F.D.L.E. M.C.I.C. Advisory Board Meeting in Tallahassee.
Feb 23: Board Director Don Ryce is interviewed by CBS, channel 11, about the Jimmy Ryce Act of 1998.
Mar 13: On the Animal Planet network, Wild Rescues first runs its re-creation of handler Rex Byrant and his bloodhound Beaufort saving the life of an unconscious 14-year-old lost near Pensacola, Florida. This bloodhound was donated to the University of West Florida Police Department by the Jimmy Ryce Center for Victims of Predatory Abduction in 1998, and at Florida Missing Children’s Day in 1999, Beauford and Rex Byrant received the 1999 Florida Trailing Team Award for this find.
Mar 24-27: In partnership with the Highland County Sheriff’s Office, the Jimmy Ryce Center for Victims of Predatory Abduction, out of a grant from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, pays travel expenses and per diem for eight of the best bloodhound trainers in the country to come to Sebring to teach more than 60 bloodhound handlers with their dogs the best trailing and scent collection and preservation techniques.
Apr 1: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce set up a booth at the Mall of the Americas in Miami to distribute brochures to kids and parents which tell them how to be safer from sexual predators.
Apr 5: At the First Annual Jimmy Ryce Guardian Angel Award Banquet, Claudine Ryce thanks those present who by their attendance and auction bids help the Jimmy Ryce Center to continue to operate its give-away bloodhound, great-escape-maneuvers prevention, 800 crisis line, and other programs designed to rescue children from sexual predators. The recipient of the First Annual Jimmy Ryce Guardian Angel Award is John Walsh for his turning his grief for his kidnapped and killed 6-year-old son Adam into positive energy to help find missing and exploited children and catch and bring to justice their killers. Polly Klaas’ father Mark Klaas speaks at the dinner.
Apr 17: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce attend the F.D.L.E. Missing Children Information Clearinghouse/M.C.I.C. Advisory Board committee meetings in Tallahassee.
Apr 18: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce attend the quarterly F.D.L.E. M.C.I.C. Advisory Board Meeting in Tallahassee.
Apr 26: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce speak at the LEO Foundation prevention meeting at the Coral Gables Country Club.
May 25: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce speak in Tallahassee in the park across from the Governor’s mansion on National Missing Children’s Day about the need for all citizens to work together to bring our missing children home.
Jun 2: Board Director Don Ryce is interviewed by WAMI-TV about the death penalty.
Jun 8: Board Director Don Ryce is interviewed by Court TV.
Jul 9: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce attend the F.D.L.E. Missing Children Information Clearinghouse/M.C.I.C. Advisory Board committee meetings in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Jul 10: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce attend the quarterly F.D.L.E. M.C.I.C. Advisory Board Meeting in St. Peterburg.
Jul 28: Executive Director Claudine Ryce as a member of the Florida Missing Children’s Day Planning Committee participates in a conference call with other committee members.
Aug 28: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce are interviewed by channel 10 in Miami on Child Alert procedures.
Aug 30: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce are interviewed by channel 7 in Miami.
Sep 8: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce are interviewed by AP interviewer Terry Spenser.
Sep 11: At the second annual Florida Missing Children’s Day, Executive Director Claudine Ryce and Board Director Don Ryce present on the steps of the Capitol the Florida trailing team award, which is funded by the Jimmy Ryce Center for Victims of Predatory Abduction. Speakers include Governor Jeb Bush, Lt. Governor Frank Brogan, F.D.L.E. Commissioner Tim Moore, and Ernie Allan from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Sep 13: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce are interviewed by NBC after the Today’s Show on Jimmy’s GEMs/Great Escape Maneuvers found at the Jimmy Ryce Center website www.jimmyryce.org.
Sep 13: In the afternoon, Board Director Don Ryce speaks to the Miami Dade School Board about the importance of school predator drills where situations which may be predatory are discussed and children practice how best to get away if approached by a sexual predator.
Sep 15: Board Director Don Ryce is interviewed by Miami channel 2 WBBT-TV on issues relating to the Jimmy Ryce Involuntary Civil Commitment Act of 1998.
Sep 22: The Jimmy Ryce Center for Victims of Predatory Abduction, Inc. Board Directors meeting is held in Miami Beach with all members present.
Oct 11: At a ceremonial tree planting at the state attorney’s building, Board Director Don Ryce presents a crystal vase to Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle for her advocacy on behalf of crime victims.
Oct 12: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce attend the quarterly F.D.L.E. M.C.I.C. Advisory Board Meeting in Tallahassee.
Oct 19-21: Executive Director Claudine Ryce attends the Annual Conference for State Missing Children Clearinghouses and Non-Profit Organizations in Montreal, Canada.
Nov 16: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce talk at the Broward Sheriff's Office Advisory Council meeting.
Dec 1-3: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce attend the Team Hope Training Meeting in Arlington, Virginia. They are founding members of Team Hope, which provides support to parents trying to endure the search for their missing child or grieving for their missisng child found deceased.
Dec 12: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce give interviews to Miami TV channel 7 on Child Alert procedures.
2001Jan 9: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce are presenters in a workshop on the subject of child abduction in Washington, D.C., at the Third National Symposium on Victims of Federal Crime.
Jan 21: Executive Director Claudine Ryce and Board Director Don Ryce attend the quarterly Missing Children Information Clearinghouse Advisory Board meeting.
Jan 25: In the Miami Herald Readers’ Forum, Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce of the Jimmy Ryce Center object to the paper’s January 19 editorial entitled “Financial Jeopardy,” in which it suggests that the Jimmy Ryce Involuntary Civil Commitment Act of 1998 is unfair to predators and is financially unsound.
Apr 12: Florida Education Commissioner Charlie Crist says he believes the Ryces words at the press conference he called on this day on the “Safe Passage” legislation “will make the difference” in its getting passed this term. Despite the fact many said it was too late to get it through, Claudine Ryce’s insistence at the press conference and in her letter to various Florida Legislators, dated April 11, that the legislature could get through anything it really wanted to seems to have been correct as the act to develop safety standards and review for all Florida school districts is passed. Claudine Ryce believes one safety standard should be the goal never to let a child out at a school bus stop alone unless the child is let out directly in front of his home, the no-one-child-bus-stop rule. The Safe Passage legislation was introduced by Senator Ron Silver (D-North Miami).
Apr 26: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce are keynote speakers at the 20th Annual Awards Luncheon in commemoration of National Crime Victims’ Week at the Presidential Club in West Palm Beach County.
May 2: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce speak at the North Dade Justice Center in a ceremony sponsored by the North Dade judges and the North Dade Bar Association as part of Law Week activities. May 1 is officially Law Day. This year’s theme is “Protecting the Best Interest of Our Children.” Don Ryce says, “Claudine and I have dedicated ourselves to trying to change our laws to fix some of the problems we believe currently exist. Some of our efforts have been very controversial. We don’t mind stimulating debate over how we should change. But we believe when we have identified a problem and proposed a solution you don’t agree with, it’s up to you to come up with solutions of your own. Too often we are most efficient at paralyzing the rest of society, even when change is necessary. The legal profession can’t allow itself to be nothing more than a fanatical defender of the status quo. As humans, we will never reach perfection. But as lawyers and judges, we should always be fighting to achieve justice. The legal profession fights hard to keep the judiciary independent and to regulate itself. But along with these powers of self-regulation comes the responsibility to constantly search for ways to make our system more just.”
May 7: Executive Director Claudine Ryce nominates Walter Horne for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Missing Children Information Clearinghouse Citizen of the Year Award, which nomination the full Advisory Board later endorses. What Pastor Horne did to receive the award was this: On his way home from work, he saw a white man pull over next to two 11-year-old black girls. When one girl walked away, she told Pastor Horne that the man said he only wanted to talk to her friend. When Pastor Horne saw the man pull the little girl into his car, he blocked the car from leaving. When he asked the child in the car if she knew the man and she said no, Pastor Horne asked her to get out of the car. Before the car sped away, he got its license plate number. When the police arrived after he called 911, the child told the police the man had told her he checks to see what color panties little girls wear, and he had grabbed her by the shirt and pulled her into the car. With the license number and the subsequent identification of the man by the child and Pastor Horne, the man was arrested.
May 9: Lieutenant Wayne Seme of the Metro-Dade Police Department canine unit called to thank the Jimmy Ryce Center for the video trailing training tapes sent, which will come in handy in training the female bloodhound Danni-Ann who should begin active service in the summer.
May 22: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce speak at the Bench and Bar Unit of the B’Nai B’rith, Miami Chapter, on “Protecting the Rights of Our Children.”
May 25: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce speak at the first annual Miami-Dade County Missing Children’s Awareness Day on National Missing Children’s Day at Miami’s Bayfront Park AT&T Amphitheater. The City of South Miami Mayor Julio Robina, the chair for this event, works with such other officials as the Miami-Dade County Mayor’s Office, Miami-Dade Commissioners, the City of Miami, Miami-Dade School Board, Citizen’s Crime Watch, Miami-Dade League of Cities, the United Way, the Children’s Services Council, the Miami Herald, Community News, Y 100, Disney Radio, and Univision Television.
Sep 10: At the Third Annual Florida Missing Children’s Day, Executive Director Claudine Ryce awards the Florida Trailing Team of the Year award to the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office in Sharpes, Florida, and the handler Corporals Michael Nidy and Scott Blizard and the bloodhound Cooper.
Sep 27: Executive Director Claudine Ryce gives speech to the South Miami Republican Women’s Club, in which she urges everyone to join in the fight against sadistic pedophiles, comparing these domestic terrorists to international terrorists, and asks Congress to give the F.B.I. concurrent jurisdiction in cases involving the abduction of our children.
Oct 25-27: Executive Director Claudine Ryce attends the State Clearinghouse/Non-Profit Organizations National Conference in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Nov 1: The Second Annual Jimmy Ryce Guardian Angel Award Banquet is held.
2002Feb 14: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce are interviewed by Telemondo about the need not only to love your child but also to care for them well by making them predator smart so they are predator resistant when they are approached by a sexual predator.
Apr 28: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce attend the F.D.L.E. Missing Children Information Clearinghouse/M.C.I.C. Advisory Board committee meetings in Tallahassee, Florida.
Apr 29: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce attend the quarterly F.D.L.E. M.C.I.C. Advisory Board Meeting in Tallahassee.
Jul 28: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce attend the F.D.L.E. Missing Children Information Clearinghouse/M.C.I.C. Advisory Board committee meetings in Tallahassee, Florida.
Jul 29: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce attend the quarterly F.D.L.E. M.C.I.C. Advisory Board Meeting in Tallahassee, held this time at the Florida Sheriff’s Association.
Aug 14: Executive Director of the Jimmy Ryce Center, with Board Director Kylli Kusma who lives in Cleveland, Ohio, give an AKC bloodhound to the Effingham (IL) County Sheriff's Office. The dog is named Hooper.
Aug 28: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce are interviewed by Miami channel 6 and NBC channel 4 about upcoming Florida Missing Children’s Day and the awareness it fosters each year for parents and children.
Sep 9: The fourth annual Florida Missing Children’s Day is celebrated in Tallahassee. The Florida Legislature set it for the second Monday in September, as it was the second Monday in September when Jimmy Ryce was abducted and murdered. It is sponsored by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Missing Children Information Clearinghouse Advisory Board, of which the Ryces are both members. Like other parents of deceased children, Jimmy’s mother Claudine Ryce places a red rose beside his picture and touches his face during the ceremony of remembrance.
Oct 2: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce are keynote speakers at the first White House Conference on Missing, Exploited, and Runaway Children. They tell Jimmy’s story to make clear the dangers children face from sexual predators and what we as adults can do to make them safer. Mr. Ryce says there are 9 predatory abductions every hour in the United States. Mrs. Ryce insists that the single most effective way to find abducted children is to bring in a well trained, scent-discriminating bloodhound immediately. In her son Jimmy’s case he was last known to be where his school bus stop let him out a few houses from his home; as Jimmy was taken away in an old truck with the window down, his scent poured out of the open window; Jimmy was only a mile away enclosed in an abandoned trailer; he was reporting missing within an hour; and his abductor kept him alive over 4 hours. When President Bush enters the Atrium Hall of the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C. and takes the stage, he said, “One abducted or missing child is too many.”
Oct 12-14: Executive Director Claudine Ryce and Board Director Don Ryce attend the Team HOPE Volunteer training in the Jimmy Ryce Law Enforcement Training room of the Charles B. Wang International Children’s Building on Prince Street in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, where the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is headquartered.
2003Apr 2: Board Director Don Ryce speaks at the Protect Your Children 2003 Symposium hosted by the David Posnack Hebrew Day School and coordinated by Protect Your Children, Inc., which sponsors safety academies throughout the country.
Apr 30: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce attend the National Amber Alert Signing Ceremony in the White House Rose Garden, which legislation the Ryces had supported. They had turned down Florida's offer to call the alert the Jimmy Ryce alert, stating the need to have a national alert under one name--that of Amber Haggerman from Texas.
Jun 30: The Jimmy Ryce Center for Victims of Predatory Abductions, Inc. has been a member of the Association of Missing and Exploited Children’s Organizations since June 30, 1999.
Jul 7; Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce with Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart, who with the rest of the South Florida Delegation supports missing children issues.
Sep 8: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce, along with past and present missing children and their families, participate in the fifth annual Florida Missing Children’s Day/FMCD in Tallahassee. Governor Jeb Bush and Lieutenant Governor Toni Jennings speak. Recognition is given to children for their bravery during an abduction or attempted abduction, local, state, and task force officers, the citizen of the year, and the elementary school essay contest winner. The Jimmy Ryce Center for Victims of Predatory Abduction funds the $500 Florida Trailing Team Award. FMCD is a project of the F.D.L.E. Missing Children Information Clearinghouse Advisory Board, created in 1996 to address issues dealing with Florida’s missing children. F.D.L.E. Commissioner Guy Tunnell chooses Board members from law enforcement officers, victim parents, government agencies, and members of the business community with an interest in missing children issues. Don and Claudine Ryce have been Board members since the Advisory Board was created.
Nov 8: Team HOPE presents Certificates of Appreciation to Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce for their continued support to families of missing children and participation as Team HOPE victim counselors.
Dec 5-6: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce attend the First Annual Association of Missing and Exploited Children Organizations/AMECO Training Conference in Law Vegas for approximately 30 non-profit missing children organizations which are members. The theme of the conference is “building your network, your skills, your contribution.” Nevada Child Seekers is the host, and Len Edwards is the President of AMECO.
2004Jan: A brochure is issued by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement/F.D.L.E. Missing Children Information Clearinghouse/MCIC entitled “Safe Passage to and from School.” It was written by Executive Director Claudine Ryce and two staff members of M.C.I.C,. Claudine Ryce plead for and was able to convince F.D.L.E. to include the following statement on what a child should do if approached by a sexual predator brandishing a weapon: “Although inherent with risks, sometimes a child’s only chance of survival, when approached by a person with a weapon, is to run or forcibly resist capture.”
Jan 5: The F.D.L.E. M.C.I.C. Advisory Board committees meet at the F.D.L.E. building at 2331 Phillips Road, Tallahassee, Florida.
Jan 6: In recognition of the hard work in bringing scent discrimination and trailing training into Florida and giving over 50 AKC bloodhounds free to Florida police and sheriff departments over the past 6 years, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Guy Tunnell presents Executive Director Claudine Ryce, at the quarterly meeting of the Missing Children Information Clearinghouse Advisory Board at the Florida Sheriff’s Association building on 2617 Mahan Drive in Tallahassee, the Resolution, signed November 6, 2003, by the Florida Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission making scent-discriminating training eligible to satisfy continuing education requirements for officers. The fit place to hang this Resolution Commissioner Tunnell feels is at the Jimmy Ryce Center for Victims of Predatory Abduction.
Feb 1: Unknown by most, what breaks the case is the bringing in of a scent-discriminating bloodhound the next morning after 11-year-old Carlie Brucia disappears Sunday evening during her walk home from the house of a friend where she had spent the night. The bloodhound follows Carlie’s scent trail behind some stores, as she had taken a short cut home, not walked along the sidewalk. While back there following the trailing team, the detective noticed a motion-sensitive surveillance camera pointing out of the car wash. He asked the owner if he could review the tape. A man is shown on the tape grabbing Carlie’s arm and pulling her reluctantly away. Catching the abduction on tape showed Carlie had been abducted and enabled Sarasota Sheriff Bill Balkwill to request an Amber Alert. When the tape was shown on national television, leads poured in, among which was the one from his landlady who identified the man as Joseph Smith, and another from the person who had lent his car to Smith the weekend Carlie was taken, from which car forensics recovered DNA evidence. On Nov 17, 2005, Joseph Smith was convicted for kidnapping, raping, and murdering 11-year-old Carlie Brucia.
Feb 9: When Miami Herald Lisa Arthur asks Jimmy Ryce Center Board Director Don Ryce if the 24-hour delay in activating the Amber Alert in the Carlie Brucia case was too long, Don Ryce says that until the sheriff had the tape the sheriff did not have sufficient information that an abduction had occurred, and the department was doing other things to find Carlie: “This will always be a hard call, and if I were the parent, I would be lobbying for my child to get an Amber Alert every time. But. . . the public would get very skeptical if it’s overused, and the effectiveness would be destroyed. I think like all the other tools, you need constant reassessment. If you don’t learn from mistakes, what is the point? If you don’t take second looks, you do the kids a disservice.”
Mar 16: The Florida Tampa Tribune reports a 15-year-old girl on her way to babysit was pulled off her bicycle by a 56-year-old man who tried to pull her into his car where he had duct tape and rope. She got away by fighting back, saying “Everyone who gets kidnapped should fight, no matter what; don’t stop fighting. Go down fighting if anything.” So, Jimmy’s Fight to Break Free GEM/Great Escape Maneuver again works! Based on his daughter’s description of the man and his car, the girl’s father drove around Hudson and located the man. Jimmy’s Jump-In-and-Help GEM for parents works too. For all Jimmy’s GEMs/Great Escape Maneuvers set forth in 1998, go to www.jimmyryce.org. website Abduction and Escape sections. A Pasco-Pinellas Circuit Court Judge is not persuaded by a predator's characterization of the attempted abduction charges as just a big misunderstanding and sets bail at $501,000.
Apr 18: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce speak at the 2005 Blue Ribbon Child Abuse Awareness Event at the Dade County Auditorium, sponsored by Amigos for Kids, Miami-Dade County Public Schools, and Commissioner Rebeca Sosa. April is Child Abuse Prevention month.
Apr 21: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce participate in the quarterly Florida Department of Law Enforcement Amber Review Committee telephonic conference. Since March of 2003, the F.D.L.E. Missing Children Information Clearinghouse/MCIC has been tracking denied Amber requests as well as activations. For an Amber alert in Florida to be issued, the case must meet all five Amber criteria: 1) the child must be under 18 years of age; 2) there must be a clear indication of an abduction; 3) the law enforcement agency’s investigation must conclude that the child’s life is in danger; 4) there must be a detailed description of the child and/or the abductor/vehicle to broadcast to the public; and 5) the activation must be recommended by the law enforcement agency having jurisdiction. (“By 2005, by the way, the national Amber Alert standard will have congealed the fourth requirement to a conjunctive rather than a disjunctive standard: that is, there must be a description of both the child and the abductor or his vehicle, which leaves all the children almost certainly abducted who were unlucky enough for no one to see the snatch out in the cold,” says Executive Director Claudine Ryce.)
May 14: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce take part in the press conference for Congressman Deutsch’s bill, The Foster Care Protection Act, held at the Broward Sheriff’s Office in Ft. Lauderdale. The bill is endorsed by John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted, the Fraternal Order of Police, and 50 other law enforcement and child care organizations, including the Jimmy Ryce Center for Victims of Predatory Abduction, the National Foster Parents Association, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. It would require state foster care caseworkers to contact local law enforcement within two hours of receiving a report of a missing foster child. The reporting of the child as missing is crucial, because this is the investigative trigger for the beginning of the search for the child by law enforcement, state clearinghouses, and non-profit missing children organizations.
May 20: Board Director Don Ryce, Executive Director Claudine Ryce, and Florida Department of Law Enforcement Special Agent/Supervisor Lee Condon serve as a 3-person panel lead by moderator the Honorable Lawrence Korda, Broward County Circuit Court Judge, on the subject of Preventing Child Abductions. This fifth annual conference on Child Abuse Prevention is at the Ft. Lauderdale Airport Hilton in Dania Beach, Florida and is hosted by ChildNet in partnership with the Joe Dimaggio Children’s Hospital, Hederson Mental Health Center, and the Children’s Services Council of Broward County. About 350 people with legal, law enforcement, medical, social work, education, and behavioral health backgrounds attend.
Jun: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce tape an interview of Jimmy’s story for Berry MSW Crisis Intervention class.
Aug 2: Executive Director Claudine Ryce e-mails to Madison County (N.Y.) Sheriff Department information about the trailing training of its 9-month old bloodhound Ellie and the National Police Bloodhound Association meets.
Oct 21: Executive Director Claudine Ryce attends the AMECO Membership work session.
Nov 10: Executive Director Claudine Ryce responds to e-mail from Williamstown Police Department about its securing funding for a K-9 tracking unit. She suggests Officer Andi Bryant see if local forfeiture funds might be used for this purpose and points the officer to the websites of the National Police Bloodhound Association and the Law Enforcement Bloodhound Association which organizations provide low cost trailing training.
Nov 18: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce participate in the sixth annual Florida Missing Children’s Day to help parents and children remember the dangers sexual predators pose and teach the children how they can escape the snares these predators use to lure them away. While the Florida Legislature has made the second Monday in September Florida Missing Children’s Day, in remembrance of Jimmy Ryce’s being kidnapped on the second Monday in September of 1995, the day was delayed from September 13th to November 18th as a result of four hurricanes sweeping through Florida in August and September of 2004. Parents and children learn how to be safer from predators by hearing what Florida law enforcement officers, citizens, school bus drivers, and bloodhound teams did during the last year to protect children from sexual predators. Governor Bush says, “Your ongoing support and participation in events such as today’s strengthen our mission to find those missing and be a comfort to their parents, families, and friends. . . . Through our collective efforts we will protect Florida’s most precious resource, our children.”
2005Jan 30: Directly under the masthead of the Sunday Palm Beach Post, there is a color picture Jimmy Ryce drew of himself and two of his friends, as well as a photograph of Jimmy at 9. The article is about, among other things, the interminable time between sentencing and the carrying out of the death penalty.
Mar 11: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce attend the F.D.L.E. Missing Children Information Clearinghouse Advisory Board quarterly meeting.
Mar 20: John Evander Couey, 46, a registered sex offender, who was staying with his half sister, about 150 yards from where Jessica Lunsford lived with her father and grandparents in Citrus County Florida, confessed that he crept into her unlocked home, covered Jessica’s mouth, and snatched her from her bed in her nightgown; then he raped her and apparently buried her alive in a shallow grave in a neighbor’s yard. About three weeks after 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford disappeared from her bedroom in Homosassa, about 60 miles north of Tampa, Board Director Don Ryce is quoted in an Associated Press article in the Treasure Coast Newspapers urging parents to go to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement website to find out which sexual predators are living in their neighborhoods, as the best defense against predatory people is awareness of who they are. At the website, parents can get the name, address, and a photograph of everyone classified as a sexual offender in Florida since 1996. To put some teeth into the registration requirement, the Florida Jimmy Ryce Registration Act of 1999 made it a felony for sexual predators not to register with the state after being released from prison if they are living in Florida for more than a few days.
Click here to link to F.D.L.E. website section listing sexual predators: www.fdle.state.fl.us/sexualpredators/
Apr: Executive Director Claudine Ryce talks to Florida detectives a day before the buried body of 13-year-old Sarah Lunde of Hillsborough County body is found, urging them to keep images of the massive search operations on television to encourage everyone in the community to continue looking for the child.
Apr 15: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce speak at the 18th Annual Training Conference of the Florida Homicide Investigators Association in Cocoa Beach, Florida.
Apr 18: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce speak at the Dade County Auditorium to hundreds of elementary school children. As part of the event, planned by Amigos for Kids as part of National Child Abuse Prevention Month, kids act out skits on the theme “I refuse to be abused.”
May: The Jimmy Ryce Center supports the Jessica Lunsford Act passed by the Florida Legislature. It extends the length of incarceration for sexual offenses against young children by making mandatory a 25-year-to life sentence for people convicted of molesting children less than 12 years old.
May: In the early hours of Sunday, long before daybreak, 17-year-old Milagro Cunningham reports to the Lake Worth, Florida police, the kidnapping by several home invaders of the 8-year-old daughter of a night-nurse who was being looked after at the house where he was staying. Implementing the Florida Child Abduction Response Team/CART procedures, established by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Missing Children Information Clearinghouse, searchers, bloodhounds, investigators, and crime scene specialists rushed to the home, the crime scene where the abduction took place. An Amber Alert is authorized and issued. Cunningham’s difficulties in re-enacting the abduction and some inconsistencies in his telling what happened cause the detective in charge to suspect that some or all of Cunningham’s home invasion story may not be true. As a result, he directs the officers making a physical search of the area not to limit their search to the front yard and the direction the boy said the car went. Less than half a mile behind the house in a landfill, an officer found a child’s underwear. When he climbed into a dumpster there and looked into a round barrel piled high with heavy chunks of concrete, he saw some still little fingers. When his supervisor got there a few minutes later and looked into the barrel, he yelled, “the fingers moved! She’s not dead! Help me get this concrete off of her. Forget waiting for the crime scene specialists.” Less than 6 hours after she was reported missing, the child is found alive. The doctors would later tell the department that the little girl would have died if she had had to bear the weight crushing down on her and breathe the restricted, dust-filled air a half hour longer. She is able to tell the detective riding in the ambulance with her that Milagro had carried her out of her bed to the dump, raped her, tried to strangle her, and had thrown rocks and stuff on top of her in the barrel he put her in. She is saved by the heaviest chucks of cement blocks catching on a lip circling the inside of the barrel. Milagro Cunningham has been charged as an adult with attempted first-degree murder, sexual battery, and kidnapping; he could be sentenced to life in prison.
May 25: Executive Director Claudine Ryce participated in OVC National Children’s Alliance program. Click here for link to its website: http://ovc.ncjrs.
May 28: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce attend Klaas Kids Kickoff at the Kingsway Crossing Shopping Center in Brandon, Florida.
Jun 17: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce are interviewed by anchors Bob Sellers and Page Hopkins for Fox News.
Jun 23: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce attend the F.D.L.E. Missing Children Information Clearinghouse/M.C.I.C. Advisory Board committee meetings in Tallahassee, Florida.
Jun 24: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce attend the quarterly F.D.L.E. M.C.I.C. Advisory Board Meeting in Tallahassee. Don Ryce is voted Chairman. In 2008, he is in his second two-year term.
Jul 13: In the Palm Beach Post Police Blotter in its Wednesday Metro Report, the location of a 6-year-old girl missing for 3 hours Tuesday is reported. The girl was found in less than 35 minutes by Clue, an 11-month-old AKC bloodhound donated to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office by the Jimmy Ryce Center for Victims of Predatory Abduction. She was playing with some of her friends at the Briarwood Mobile Home Park.
Jul 17: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce speak on how we can make our children safer from sexual predators, at the 36th Annual Convention of the National Association of Commissions for Women, hosted by the Florida Commission on the Status of Women, at the Eden Roc Resort in Miami Beach.
Aug 22: For the coming 10th anniversary of Jimmy’s kidnapping, the Ryces were interviewed in Vero by Peter Dobens of channel 25.
Aug 24: On the 10th anniversary of Jimmy’s abduction, the Ryces are interviewed by T.V. channels 5 and 7.
Sep 1: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce speak at the Southern Regional Training in Austen, Texas for the Amber Alert program. For more information on the Amber Alert broadcast program, visit the U.S. Department of Justice website at www.AMBERALERT.gov.
Sep 5: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce were interviewed in Vero Beach by Peter D’Oench of Miami TV Channel 10, from which session a 2-minute special was run on Sunday Sept 11 on the early and late shows.
Sep 11: Funds raised from The Classon Pools Charity Golf Tournament are donated this year to the Jimmy Ryce Center for Victims of Predatory Abduction. Awareness brochures are distributed to the guests to aid parents in educating themselves and their children on how to be more predator smart and thus more predator resistant.
Sep 11: On the 10th anniversary of Jimmy Ryce’s kidnapping on September 11, 1995, Adam Neal, reporter for the Vero Beach Press Journal, writes an article describing some of the things the Ryces have done to make children safer from sexual predators during the years since Jimmy’s death.
Sep 12: At Florida Missing Children’s Day, John Walsh presented the John and Reve Walsh Award to Don and Claudine Ryce for the work they have done to make children safer from sexual predators since the kidnapping and murder of their 9-year-old son Jimmy Ryce on September 11, 1995. Former Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Tim Moore and former Florida Congresswoman Paula Hawkins received the award in 2003 and 2004 respectively. Governor Jeb Bush and Lieutenant Governor Toni Jennings spoke to the 300 or so children, law enforcement officers, and legislators present.
Sep 12: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce attend the F.D.L.E. Missing Children Information Clearinghouse/M.C.I.C. Advisory Board committee meetings over a working lunch in the Governor’s Conference Room, where, among other things, the Florida Missing Children’s Day ceremony is critiqued in beginning preparation for an every better awareness day next year.
Sep 22: Board Director Don Ryce spoke to CART members in Jacksonville.
Sep 27: Board Director Don Ryce spoke to CART members in Miami at the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
Sep 29: The Jimmy Ryce Center donates an AKC bloodhound named Cooper to the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office. Executive Director Claudine Ryce said, “Jimmy would be alive today if a scent-discriminating bloodhound had been brought in within an hour after he was reported missing. We do not want our children crying out “Mommy, Daddy, somebody help me!" and nobody comes.” Sheriff Bob White at the presentation press conference said his department is also raising money for a mobile command center to use in missing children cases.
Oct 14: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce are asked by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs to attend a Victim/Parent Focus Group. Assistant Attorney General Regina B. Schofield discussed the involvement of the Office of Justice in missing and abducted children issues. Claudine Ryce suggested the Amber Alert is not reaching all the most endangered children as it has been limited to cases where the abduction is seen or there is some physical evidence of foul play, and she pointed out that most deaths are occurring in the category “Lost, Injured, or Otherwise Missing,” which her son Jimmy fell in. When, as would have been the case with Jimmy had the Amber Alert existed at the time of his disappearance, it can be determined almost to a certainty that the child was abducted because all other possibilities are reduced to near zero, the activation, she said, of an Amber Alert should be allowed: in Jimmy’s case, his biological parents were happily married, and all his grandparents were dead, so the likelihood, it was a parental abduction was almost nil; within an hour by speaking to Jimmy’s piano teacher, the exchange student living in the home, his school teacher, and neighborhood kids often at his house, it would have been clear he had no reason to run away, as one of his best friends put it: “Jimmy is a genius; he's not stupid; he has everything.” Don Ryce has said often that “a good tool, such as the Amber Alert, should be, like any tool, subject always to redesign to make it a better tool to do what it is supposed to do.” An Amber Alert is an effective search technique, because it uses millions of eyes to look for children who have been abducted by sexual predators. The Amber Alert criteria that “law enforcement officials have a reasonable belief that an abduction has occurred,” Claudine argues clearly existed in Jimmy’s case. Also, the requirement that “enough descriptive information exists about the victim and the abductor for law enforcement to issue an Amber Alert” should be that “enough descriptive information exists about the victim and/or the abductor for law enforcement to issue an Amber Alert.” Why should the predator’s being careful and lucky enough to snatch the kid without anyone seeing him preclude the issuance of the alert when a good description of the victim exists, and all other criteria are satisfied?
Oct 18: Executive Director Claudine Ryce attended the Association of Missing and Exploited Children Organization/AMECO Annual Membership Meeting in Tampa. AMECO has developed one in-take form for all members. Now,a parent’s reporting a child missing to one member enables all members to help look for the child without the parent's having to fill out separate and different forms for AMECO members the parent is able to identify. Claudine Ryce is appointed to the Resource and Development Committee, the strategic goal of which is to strengthen and diversify financial support for AMECO.
Oct 20-22: Executive Director Claudine Ryce completed 24 hours of training at the State Clearinghouse/NPO National Conference held in Tampa, Florida and administered by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention/OJJDP of the U.S. Department of Justice, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and the Criminal Justice Division Child Protection Training Center of the Fox Valley Technical College.
Nov 30: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce give the Victim Perspective talk at the Child Abduction Response Team: Response and Investigative Strategies conference in Ft. Myers, Florida. The three-day training for the law enforcement officers who will make up the Child Abduction Response Teams/CART is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice OJJDP. It will be repeated in more than 10 different regions across the country each year. The Florida Child Abduction Response Teams program was devised by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and it is the Florida model which is being used to train law enforcement personnel around the country. The CART concept is to put together in advance regional law enforcement resources, such as bloodhounds, ground searchers, investigative protocol, so that search and rescue teams and detectives can be deployed rapidly when a child is reported abducted. Since early 2005 CART, as of this time, has been activated 13 times in Florida, with 11 of these activations leading to the successful recovery of the child. Claudine Ryce said, “If we’d had CART in place when Jimmy was taken in 1995, he would have been found. He needed us to get to him in time, before the four hours he had to live had run out. That’s what CARTs do. Get to the kid in time to save the child's life.”
Dec 9: Congresswoman Wasserman’s office informs Jimmy Ryce’s parents that the involuntary civil confinement provision in the New Child Crimes bill, HR 4472, is named the Jimmy Ryce Civil Confinement act. Jimmy's parents are proud for this act to carry Jimmy’s name, because what better way to protect children across the country from sexual predators than for the Federal government to require all states to pass legislation similar to the Jimmy Ryce Involuntary Civil Commitment Act of 1998, which reduces the number of sexual predators roaming our neighborhoods by keeping the worst locked away where they cannot reach their would-be young victims.
Dec: Claudine Ryce, with funds raised by Child Protection Education of America from the area for the CPEA-JRC Jimmy Ryce Bloodhound Network Program, purchases a 6-week-old AKC bloodhound puppy from breeder Pamela Andrews in Lake Butler, Florida. With Hilary Session of CPEA and Claudine Ryce of JRC, the puppy is flown in the airplane cabin under the middle seat to Settle, Washington and driven about 2 hours away to the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office, where the bloodhound is given to Detective Randy Foltz who will be its handler. The puppy is to be named Chief. The bloodhound the Jimmy Ryce Center gave the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office 6 years ago died of bloat last year.
2006Jan 10: With funds raised in Florida for the CPEA-JRC Jimmy Ryce Bloodhound Network Program, Executive Director of the Jimmy Ryce Center for Victims of Predatory Abduction Claudine Ryce and Executive Director of Child Protection Education of America Hilary Sessions give a bloodhound puppy free to the Tampa Police Department. Jimbo, the first bloodhound from the Jimmy Ryce Center died several months ago, and the Tampa Police Department wanted a replacement. Major Teague who was the handler of Jimbo will be the handler of the new bloodhound, which was purchased from Lake Butler, Florida breeder Pamela Butler from whom many of the bloodhounds in the last five years have been purchased by the Jimmy Ryce Center.
Jan 11: Those who would like to receive Florida Amber and Missing Children Alerts may register their e-mail address at www.missingchildrenalert.com
Aug: Board Director Don Ryce and Executive Director Claudine Ryce are invited to the President’s signing of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 in the Rose Garden. The section of the Act dealing with funding for the implementation of state Involuntary Civil Commitment Acts is named for Jimmy Ryce. Having involuntary civil commitment state statutes allows the state to keep the worst sexual predators locked up in mental institutions, even after serving their penal sentence, if it is not safe to let them roam our neighborhoods.
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