Washington
2 years in, Washington's alert system for missing Indigenous people is working
Washington state was first in the nation to implement alerts specific to Missing Indigenous Persons more than two years ago. By the end of August this year, the State Patrol had issued 114 of those alerts, with the subject being located in all but 13 cases.
Law enforcement officials say these alerts play a crucial role in locating teenage runaways and have proven valuable in longer-term cases as well.
You’ve probably seen Missing Indigenous Persons Alerts in your email or online. They’re issued by the Washington State Patrol, at the request of local law enforcement, and they often feature the person’s photo, their age and some details about their disappearance.
Earl Cowan is the chief of police for the Swinomish Tribal Community, northwest of Seattle.
“As a chief of police for a native sovereign nation, it’s a great tool for us to put information out about somebody missing from our community to a very, very wide base very quickly,” he said.
RELATED: FCC adopts an alert system for missing Indigenous people
Cowan said statewide alerts are key. His agency requested one that located a 2-month-old infant being transported far south of the reservation by a non-tribal family member.
The alerts are meant to correct historic disparities. According to the Washington State Patrol, Native Americans are nearly 2% of the state’s population but nearly 6% of its missing persons’ cases.
The disparities and lack of data on many cases were highlighted in a groundbreaking 2018 report by Seattle’s Urban Indian Health Institute which led to calls for more action, including the Attorney General’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and People Task Force and the recent establishment of a cold case unit.
As part of these efforts, the Washington Legislature mandated the new alert system in March 2022.
Mike Williams is Chief of Police for the Suquamish Tribe, on the Kitsap Peninsula. He calls the alerts a huge step forward. He said the majority of alerts he has requested are for juvenile runaways, as with one recent case where the young person was spotted quickly on public transportation.
“We got a wave — I mean 10 or 15 — tips within a half an hour on a runaway we had, that was on a train in downtown Seattle,” Williams said.
Many of these young people run away more than once. Williams said he takes the alert process seriously each time.
At the Washington State Patrol, Carri Gordon oversees all the state’s missing person alerts. She said juvenile runaways make up the majority of the alerts, partly because federal law imposes strict requirements on police to enter missing persons in the National Crime Information Center within two hours of notification if the person missing is age 20 or younger.
Gordon sees the alerts as effective at getting runaway youth to make contact.
“I raised teenage boys and no teenager wants their poster plastered all over Twitter that they’re missing,” she said. “And when they see that, they’re like, ‘Oh crap, they really want to find me.’ And they turn themselves in.”
RELATED: Washington’s first missing Indigenous person alert is issued
Rosemarie Tom is the Legal Advocate and point of contact for families of missing persons at the Lummi Nation Victims of Crime office near Bellingham. Lummit Nation tribal police initiated the state’s first Missing Indigenous Persons Alert after the system was created.
Tom said coordination between tribal and non-tribal law enforcement on missing persons has dramatically improved: People are being located in weeks rather than months.
“It is extremely rapid, we have everyone on board, there’s very clear communication and documentation that I have not seen in the past,” Tom said. “So it’s been really transformative and wonderful support.”
She said that urgency is vital because human traffickers pose a huge risk to these teenagers.
Traffickers “can transfer them overnight over 100 miles or even across state borders with the promise of a better life or a nice relationship or, ‘It’s us against the world,’ and they usually start with romantic relationships,” she said.
With the improvement in jurisdictional issues and communication, Tom said tribal officials are turning their attention to addressing the situations that can prompt young people to run away, including domestic violence, mental health and substance use issues and other root causes.
“The alert and the response itself is very positive,” she said. “The aftermath and the recovery is a very different story. These aren’t happily-ever-after situations most of the time.”
The State Patrol’s Carri Gordon said one surprise has been that Missing Indigenous Persons Alerts have brought breakthroughs in some longer-term cases as well.
Thirty-five-year-old Besse Handy had been missing for more than a year when her mother asked state patrol to send out the alert.
“At the time we were like, ‘Oh, I don’t know, that wasn’t really the intent of the program,’” Gordon said. “But the more we thought about it, we did it, and because of that a lot of things about the case itself came to light.”
Like the fact that Handy’s file lacked DNA and dental records to help identify her. Meanwhile, Handy’s mother Connie Samuels had been desperately searching for her daughter, even dreaming that Besse was back home.
“Because there’s always that little thing of hope in your mind that goes, maybe I’m going to see her again. Maybe I’ll find her. Maybe she’s alive,” Samuels said. “That never stops.”
RELATED: Colorado’s new alert system is helping to locate missing Indigenous people
Until you know for sure, she said. Thanks to the dental records, Samuels learned in January 2023 that Besse had died in a Seattle fire a year and a half earlier.
Now Samuels is raising the two children her daughter left behind. She says she hopes the Missing Indigenous Person Alerts can prevent those losses for the next family.
Dawn Pullin is one of the tribal liaisons at the Washington State Patrol who helps families navigate these searches. She said the alerts can take some of the burden off family members who in the past labored alone to get the word out, especially about missing adults.
“The success rate is amazing,” Pullin said. “What it does is it provides a professionalism to people searching for their loved ones, versus creating their own fliers or their own personal contact information on the internet.”
Washington
Washington Watch: CCAMPIS grant competition announced – Community College Daily
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), “on behalf of the Department of Education (ED),” on Monday released a Notice Inviting Grant Applications for the Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) program. Applications are due by May 29.
Last November, ED announced that it had entered into an interagency agreement with HHS to administer the CCAMPIS program. This is the first CCAMPIS competition conducted under this arrangement.
Approximately $73.5 million will go to institutions of higher education that awarded at least $250,000 in Pell grants to enrolled students in FY 2025. HHS will award about 148 grants, ranging from $150,000 to $1 million.
The terms of the grant competition are not significantly different than prior competitions. As before, there are two absolute grant priorities that every application must address – leveraging non-federal resources and utilizing a sliding-fee scale for low-income parents.
This year’s competition includes only one invitational priority that reflects the Trump administration’s general educational policy. The new priority, entitled “Expanding Education Choice in Early Learning Settings,” encourages applications that “expand access to education choice … including by empowering parents in choosing the early learning setting that best meets their family’s needs.” Flexible childcare programs that include drop-in care and care during nontraditional hours are also encouraged.
One other notable difference from prior competitions is an expanded “Terms and Conditions” section that not only requires compliance with applicable civil rights laws, but also refers to Trump administration Executive Orders and guidance on racial discrimination that clarify “the application of federal antidiscrimination laws to programs or initiatives that may involve discriminatory practices, including those labeled as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (“DEI”) programs.” This includes any “discriminatory equity ideology [as defined in Executive Order 14190] in violation of a federal antidiscrimination law.”
The exact scope of these terms is unclear because courts have not found many of the practices described in these Executive Orders and guidance documents to be violations of federal law.
Washington
A look at the roots (and routes) of immigration to Washington
The Newsfeed
This week, the team brings you stories about how communities including Filipino immigrants, Sephardic Jews and Somalis arrived in the Pacific Northwest
Each week on The Newsfeed, host Paris Jackson and a team of veteran journalists dive deep into one topic and provide impactful reporting, interviews and community insights from sources you can trust. Each day this week, this post will be updated with a new story from the team.
Group hopes to boost recognition for Seattle’s Filipinotown
By Venice Buhain
The group Filipinotown Seattle hopes to make sure that the legacy of Filipino Americans in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District isn’t forgotten.
One of the group’s current projects is pushing for a Filipinotown placemarking sign in the CID.
“Filipino Americans have had a presence here for over 100 years in Seattle,” said Filipinotown Seattle Executive Director Devin Israel Cabanilla.
He said that the signage is important to remind people that “the International District is not just Chinatown. Japantown. Filipinotown is here as well.”
The group held a poll on what signage might look like and where it might be located. It would be similar to the Chinatown sign on South Jackson Street and Fifth Avenue South, or the Wing Luke Museum
In the early 20th century, the area now known as the CID was a hub full of businesses, entertainment, social groups and housing that served Seattle’s growing immigrant population from Asia and elsewhere. The communities all intermingled throughout the CID.
“This area was a central place for Asian Pacific immigrants simply because of segregation,” Cabanilla said.
Because the Philippines was a U.S. territory from 1898 to 1946, Filipino immigrants were unaffected by laws in the 1920s that restricted immigration from Japan or China. Many Filipinos came to study at the University of Washington or to work in burgeoning industries, like lumber, farming, canneries and factories.
While the physical Filipino presence in terms of buildings and storefronts in the CID dwindled in the later 20th century with redevelopment, Seattle Filipinos and Filipino Americans continued to make impacts locally, regionally and nationally.
“It may not have been in terms of storefronts, but our presence has always existed in terms of politics, culture as well,” Cabanilla said.
The Seattle Department of Transportation said it is aware that the group is working on its signage request, but the Department of Neighborhoods has not yet received a formal request. They are also working to develop a clearer process for this and other similar neighborhood signage proposals.
Filipinotown Seattle said it hopes that the sign helps remind Seattle of the CID’s unique designation as a neighborhood shaped by many immigrants and migrants to Seattle.
“Is it Chinatown? Is it Japantown? Is it Little Saigon? It’s all those things. And I think re cultivating that this is a multicultural district, Filipinotown is helping establish: Yes, it’s more than one thing,” Cabanilla said.

Venice Buhain is a multimedia journalist at Cascade PBS. She previously was the Cascade PBS’s associate news editor and education reporter. Venice has also worked for KING 5, The Seattle Globalist and TVW News.
Venice Buhain is a multimedia journalist at Cascade PBS. She previously was the Cascade PBS’s associate news editor and education reporter. Venice has also worked for KING 5, The Seattle Globalist and TVW News.
Washington
The Church of Jesus Christ has announced its 384th temple
The state of Washington is getting a seventh temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The Marysville Washington Temple was announced Sunday night during a devotional in the Marysville Washington Stake by Elder Hugo E. Martinez, a General Authority Seventy in the church’s United States West Area Presidency.
“We are pleased to announce the construction of a temple in Marysville, Washington,” the First Presidency said in a statement. “The specific location and timing of the construction will be announced later. This is a reason for all of us to rejoice and express gratitude for such a significant blessing — one that will allow more frequent access to the ordinances, covenants and power that can only be found in the house of the Lord.”
The other temples in Washington are the Columbia River, Moses Lake, Seattle, Spokane, Tacoma and Vancouver temples.
The church has 214 temples in operation. Plans for another 170 temples have been announced; many of those temples are in various stages of planning and construction.
Sunday’s temple announcement follows the new practice of the church’s First Presidency, which determines where temples will be built — and when and how they will be announced.
The First Presidency directed a General Authority Seventy to announce the first temple in Maine at a fireside there in December.
In January, church President Dallin H. Oaks said the Maine announcement set the pattern for future temple announcements.
“The best place to announce a temple is in that temple district,” he told the Deseret News.
The First Presidency will continue to decide where future temples will be built. It then will “assign someone else to make the announcement in the place where the temple will be built,” he said.
This pattern came to him as a strong impression after he assumed leadership of the church in October, following the death of his friend, President Russell M. Nelson.
This came as a strong impression to him shortly after he assumed the leadership of the church, President Oaks said.
The church remains in the midst of an aggressive temple-building era. President Nelson announced 200 new temples from 2018 to 2025. All but one were announced at general conference.
Five dozen temples are now under construction.
President Oaks now has overseen the announcement of two temples, neither at a general conference.
At the October conference he said that “with the large number of temples now in the very earliest phases of planning and construction, it is appropriate that we slow down the announcement of new temples.”
Ten new temples are scheduled to be dedicated in the next six months.
- May 3: Davao Philippines Temple.
- May 3: Lindon Utah Temple.
- May 31: Bacolod Philippines Temple.
- June 7: Yorba Linda California Temple.
- June 7: Willamette Valley Oregon Temple.
- Aug. 16: Belo Horizonte Brazil Temple.
- Aug. 16: Cleveland Ohio Temple.
- Aug. 30: Phnom Penh Cambodia Temple.
- Oct. 11: Miraflores Guatemala City Guatemala Temple.
- Oct. 18: Managua Nicaragua Temple.
Two-thirds of the 170 temples still to be built are outside the United States.
Temples are distinct from the meetinghouses where Latter-day Saints worship Jesus Christ each Sunday. Temples are closed on Sundays, but they open during the week as sanctuaries where church members go to find peace, make covenants with God and perform proxy ordinances for deceased relatives.
-
Pennsylvania45 seconds agoOfficials react to Pennsylvania abortion ruling, Medicaid ban struck down
-
Rhode Island7 minutes agoNothing Bundt Cakes opens first RI bakery
-
South-Carolina13 minutes agoSLED issues Blue Alert for armed, dangerous woman in Midlands
-
South Dakota19 minutes ago
SD Lottery Powerball, Lotto America winning numbers for April 20, 2026
-
Tennessee25 minutes agoTennessee Senate passes ‘CVS bill,’ reshapes pharmacy business as CVS threatens closures
-
Texas31 minutes agoFitness influencer drowns during swimming portion of Ironman Texas
-
Utah37 minutes agoUtah Jazz win coin flip, guaranteed to keep NBA Draft Lottery pick
-
Vermont43 minutes ago
VT Lottery Powerball, Gimme 5 results for April 20, 2026