I Knew My Daughter Was in Trouble. Here’s How I Found Her.
“I still can’t believe I found out through an app. Mind blowing,” Gloria told us. “Oh my gosh, I was bragging about it to the cops.”
Early in April, Gloria Ortega saw a news report on KTLA5 about Citizen, a free app that alerts you to crime and emergencies near you. She thought she’d give it a try, not thinking it would help her personally anytime soon, but it certainly seemed worth the download.
Two days later, on Wednesday April 10th, she heard choppers flying nearby, hovering around the benches outside the family health clinic a few blocks away where she knew her teenage daughter, her boyfriend, and few of their girlfriends were hanging out.
Starting to get concerned, Gloria called her daughter. No answer. She texted. No answer.
She then saw the Citizen safety alert.
“I went into the app and saw an address: 801 S Chevy Chase Drive, Glendale, CA 91205. I know that address by heart.”
‘Person Assaulted’ the incident read, at the exact location where they were all hanging out.
With this information, Gloria stopped everything she was doing and rushed over.
She arrived to the scene to find that her worst fears were true: her daughter, boyfriend, and friends had just been assaulted by a gang of young adults in their 20s, who had beat up the girls and severely slashed the boyfriend with a knife.
Thanks to the Citizen alert, Gloria was able to get to the scene less than 5 minutes after the police.
The teens were sitting on the street, recuperating and taking turns explaining what happened — her daughter hadn’t even been questioned yet—when Gloria showed up. The cops were flabbergasted as to how she was able to show up so quickly after the assault.
“I found out about it from the Citizen app!” Gloria told them.
Gloria’s daughter wasn’t answering her mother’s calls and texts because her phone had died earlier in the day. Without Citizen, Gloria said she has no idea how long it would have been before she would have found out about the assault.
“It really helped, you don’t understand… I still can’t believe I found out through an app. Mind blowing,” Gloria told us. “Oh my gosh, I was bragging about it to the cops.”
While the kids suffered injuries after the senseless attack, they were ultimately okay, with perpetrators identified and currently under investigation.
“I never thought this would help me personally. A lot of times you hear the chopper, you want to know what’s going on. You never know. I have 3 teenage daughters — I never thought this would hit home,” Gloria said.
Citizen instantly sends safety alerts directly to your phone whenever significant crime or emergencies happen near you.
