"Amber Alert" system gets test in Iowa with missing girl

Nebraska’s new “Amber Alert” system helped track down a missing baby yesterday in the Omaha/Council Bluffs metro, and a spokesman for the Iowa State Patrol says authorities gave our state’s system a trial run. Nebraska issued an “Amber Alert” yesterday morning when a car stolen from a Council Bluffs gas station, with a nine-month-old girl inside. Sergeant Robert Hansen, Iowa State Highway Patrol spokesman, says Iowa’s system will be up and running sometime in early 2003, but yesterday they used an already-developed list of western Iowa broadcasters and put out an alert on this side of the Misssouri River. He says they have the right people in the right state of mind to get the system going.The car — with the baby inside, unharmed — was found about three hours after the alert went out. Someone called to report seeing the white Jeep, abandoned.Hansen says the bottom line is the information quickly got out, someone recognized the vehicle in Omaha and tipped off police, so “the story ends well.”