20 for the Next 20: Amanda Leonard, Missing Child Center – Hawai‘i

The agency’s coordinator draws on a background in family law and her own childhood experiences to help kids and teens in distress.

Amanda Leonard’s career has been focused on helping children and teens in distress, and that sometimes requires speedy, informed action and the help of the entire community through the Maile Amber Alerts that Leonard helps to activate.

Leonard’s path to her work at Hawai‘i’s Missing Child Center began when she was a child undergoing the trauma of her parents’ divorce; she was especially moved by the support provided by child protection professionals.

“I just had the highest respect for them and appreciation, and I knew that was going to be my calling, to take that experience and do something good with it … to be in a position where I could actually protect kids.”

Leonard started volunteering at age 19 with the state Judiciary’s O‘ahu Children’s Justice Center. Later, she got a job at the center, which boosted her entry into the Richardson School of Law, where she aimed to become a family law attorney. That led to her current position as coordinator of the Missing Child Center – Hawai‘i, under the state Department of the Attorney General.

In 2005, Hawai‘i became the 50th state to launch its own program in the Amber Alert network, which taps communities to help find missing children. The Maile Amber Alert is named for Maile Gilbert, who was abducted from her Kailua home and murdered in 1985, and Amber Hagerman, the child in Texas whose case inspired the national program.

The first Maile Amber Alert in Hawai‘i was issued in 2005 and circulated primarily through TV and radio. But people with pagers also received the alert: A mother with a pickup truck had parked and rushed into a convenience store but left her 4-month-old in the truck, which a man stole and later abandoned. One of those alert citizens with a pager found the truck and baby inside unharmed. “He just happened to be at the right place at the right time,” Leonard says.

Mobile phones now enable wider distribution of the alerts. The system has been activated three more times since 2005, with a child rescued each time.

Elladine Olevao is administrator of the state’s Child Welfare Services Branch and has seen Leonard and her assistant work with runaways and other missing teens. Last July, a multiagency effort called Operation Shine resulted in the safe recovery of 11 people aged 15-19.

“Amanda is excellent with the kids. She meets them where they’re at,” Olevao says.