NORFOLK, Va. — 12-year-old Tiffany Jackson is reunited with her family this evening after being missing for over 24 hours.
Early Friday afternoon, the Virginia State Police issued a CODI Alert to find her.
Issuing a CODI Alert was a big part of what contributed to bringing Jackson home, a new alert the state of Virginia has only been using for two weeks.
It stands for "Critical Operation for a Disappeared Child Initiative" or CODI for short. It’s named after Codi Bigsby, a four-year-old who went missing in Hampton back in 2022.
Police never put out an AMBER Alert for him, because they didn’t think Codi was kidnapped or taken, which is the main criteria to issue those kinds of alerts.
It led the state to devise a new type of alert when children under the age of who 18 go missing under suspicious circumstances.
Although Codi was never found, the CODI alert issued for 12 year-old Tiffany Jackson today may have helped bring her back home.
Norfolk Deputy Chief of Police, Michael Maslow, said, “It’s just thanks to the effort of the officers and the detectives searching the area, for she was found just a few blocks away from her home safe and sound."
Maslow, his team and detectives scoured the area around Amherst Street in Norfolk, the area she had last been seen, sending up drones and knocking on doors. They were able to pinpoint their search, placing Jackson close to home and, most importantly, safe.
When asked if there was any harm of foul play that was happening in this case, Deputy Chief Maslow said, “We have nothing to lead us to believe that.”
Jackson was one of the state’s first CODI Alert cases. The police said they hope these alerts can help them solve more cases moving forward.