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By D'ANN LAWRENCE WHITE

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 30, 2008

BRANDON - It won't bring her daughter back.

Hilary Sessions has long given up hope of ever seeing her daughter, Tiffany, alive again.

However, she hopes someone else's daughter will be protected by a new Florida law that went into effect July 1 and requires law enforcement to start searching within two hours of a report of a missing person younger than 26 and suspected of being in danger or victims of crime. Previously the age limit was 18.

The Valrico resident is eagerly awaiting the opportunity to meet with Gov. Charlie Crist for the official signing of the Jennifer Kesse and Tiffany Sessions Missing Persons Act. Sessions has been fighting for the legislation since her daughter, a student at the University of Florida, went for a jog around the Gainesville campus Feb. 9, 1989, and never returned to her dorm room.

Since then, Sessions has become an outspoken national advocate for missing children.

She became involved with the Missing Children HELP Center, a nonprofit organization on Ware Boulevard in Tampa founded by Brandon resident Ivana DiNova to help the families of missing children. The group helped spearhead efforts to pass the 1983 Missing Children's Act, which eliminated waiting periods for searching for missing children.

When the HELP Center closed in 2001, Sessions took over the offices and many of the cases the center was handling and opened the nonprofit Child Protection Education of America.

Before long, it became apparent that CPEA needed more than part-time volunteers, Sessions said. So she ended her career with the nation's third-largest mutual fund company to become the full-time executive director of CPEA in 2004, one of six paid employees.

"This is where my heart is," she said. "When you have a passion for something, whatever you do is never enough."

Sessions describes the organization as the right hand of law enforcement when it comes to missing children cases. CPEA works with law enforcement, case workers and the parents of missing children throughout the country. The staff offers services such as printing fliers, distributing photographs, billboards and any help needed.

"We're here to serve law enforcement any way we can, to be an adjunct," she said. "And we're here to support the families. We've walked in their shoes. We know how they feel."

Currently, CPEA is working on 451 active missing children cases.

In June, the organization moved into larger offices at 3439 Brook Crossing Drive in the Brook Crossing office park off Bloomingdale Avenue in Brandon. It offers children's fingerprinting and self-defense classes for children and women.

But Sessions' pet project would have to be the bloodhounds.

She is convinced that if a bloodhound had been available soon after Tiffany didn't return to her dorm as expected, law enforcement would have had a much better chance of finding her.

So among the missions of the CPEA is to raise money to purchase bloodhounds for any law enforcement agency that wants to have one on hand to track missing persons.

"A lot of families of missing children believe that if a scent-discriminating bloodhound had been brought to the scene immediately, they might have their loved one with them today," Sessions said. "Each person has a unique scent, and the sooner a scent-discriminating dog is given the scent, the greater the chance is of recovery. Time is of the essence, because the more people who show up, the dog's nose will be less sensitive to that one scent."

Sessions found bloodhound breeder Pam Andrews in Lake Butler, who was willing to provide the puppies if Sessions could get donations to cover the cost of each bloodhound and law enforcement agencies offered to train them.

With donations from civic associations, corporate sponsors and the sale of DNA identification kits, CPEA has donated 16 bloodhounds to law enforcement agencies. Among them are Snoopy, the Tampa Police Department's bloodhound, and Ella, who helps patrol Polk County. Ella was named for 85-year-old Winter Haven resident Ella M. Murray, who went missing in 1997 and has not been seen since.

Other CPEA bloodhounds have gone to law enforcement agencies in Massachusetts and Washington state.

"My goal is to make sure all agencies have a bloodhound or access to one," Sessions said.

A member of the advisory board for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Sessions noted that 579 canines are working in law enforcement in Florida. Of those, 99 are trail dogs, meaning they are trained to follow someone's trail by sight, and 89 are scent-discriminating dogs, meaning they are given an article of clothing with the person's scent and track it.

Duvall and Polk counties have the most scent-discriminating dogs, with 20. Hillsborough County has four.

"These dogs are amazing," Sessions said. "In January, Ella found a boy who was missing for 24 hours."

Sessions knows she will not have a happy ending, so for her, the Jennifer Kesse and Tiffany Sessions Missing Persons Act represents more than much-needed law to aid families desperate to get law enforcement to act more quickly.

Under the new state law, when a person has been missing for 90 days, law enforcement will be asked to obtain DNA samples from family members and enter it into the National DNA Database. Relatives' DNA often is similar to those who have gone missing.

"The hit rate for a match is 32 percent," Sessions said. "So maybe there's a chance some of the half-million unidentified bodies sitting in morgues around the country can be identified, and some of these families can finally have closure.

"If we can get this law passed nationally, think of what it will do for these families going through agony," she said. "It's the unanswered questions that eat at you day after day."

For information, call Child Protection Education of America at 1-866-USA-CHILD or (813) 626-3001 or visit www.find-missing -children.org.

Reporter D'Ann Lawrence White can be reached at (813) 657-4524 or dlwhite@tampatrib.com.

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