BRADENTON, FLA (March 3, 2026) – An unimaginable tragedy strikes.

Your mom and dad are on vacation a thousand miles away. An oncoming driver loses control of his vehicle on a two-lane highway, and has a horrific, head-on crash with your parents’ car.

Your mom and dad are life-flighted to a hospital. They are in critical condition, unconscious.

When will you find out about what’s happened?

It was six-and-a-half hours after Tiffany Olson died instantly in a December, 2005, accident on U.S. 19 in Bradenton (Fla.) before her mother, Christine, found out what had happened to her 22-year-old daughter. Christine lived just 15 minutes away from the accident site, but it took that long for Florida Highway Patrol officers to connect with the mom.

“Tiffany had a driver’s license, but in her case there was no one at that address,” Christine explained. “What does law enforcement do then?”

After months of mourning, grief, depression, and even thoughts of suicide, Christine resolved to change the way next-of-kin would learn if a family member or loved one was involved in an accident, sudden evacuation, or some other possible tragedy. A non-profit and a national campaign to make Emergency Contact Information (ECI) available almost instantly, To Inform Families First, was about to happen.

IT BEGAN WITH NEIGHBORHOOD PETITION CAMPAIGN

Christine began doing some research. She learned that, on average, there was a six-hour time lag between someone being catastrophically injured in an accident and any next-of-kin notification. “There has to be a better way,” she said to her neighbors and friends.

Then a thought hit her, and hit some of her Anna Maria Island neighbors also. Why not have emergency contact information connected with a person’s driver’s license?

A co-worker nicknamed Captain John, the cook where Christine worked (then and now) at the Rod and Reel Pier Restaurant near Holmes Beach, made the petition. Hundreds of Anna Maria Island residents signed it. Christine took the petition to her (then) state representative, William Galvano, whose reaction was “Oh my God, this is amazing,” Christine recalls. “He took it to the Division of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles in Tallahassee.  Their response was ‘why haven’t we done this already?’”

Come October 2006, just 10 months after Tiffany’s death, and a nervous Christine Olson sad in front of a computer in Representative Galvano’s office.

“I was the first person in Florida – anywhere, it turned out – to put my emergency contact information into a motor vehicle database,” she recalls. “Rep. Galvano said we’re doing it immediately, and it only took six months from the time we presented the petitions for it to happen.”

Peace of mind. Hope. Reassurance. These are just a few of the many benefits which happen when a person has registered, and in Florida there are about 22 million people in the registration database.

It works.

Nick Johnson is an example. When he was 19, he almost died from an automobile accident. A native of East Palatka, Fla, Nick and his cousin (a passenger) crashed into a tree line in the middle of the night. Nick was ejected from his vehicle due to the crash, and he was in critical condition. Both were life flighted to a hospital in Jacksonville, more than 50 miles away. His mother Jeanne was his listed with his driver’s license as his ECI.

First responders used Nick’s driver’s license and were able to contact his mother almost immediately. Jeanne Johnson and her husband rushed to the hospital in Jacksonville, and were there within an hour of notification.

“They wouldn’t have known. The trooper didn’t know who he was. The paramedics didn’t know who he was,” Jeanne Johnson recalls. It had taken less than a minute to register ECI on Nick’s license.

“I was just glad we were able to find out as soon as I did. We were able to get everyone to start praying. That’s what worked,” Jeanne says.

“There are 17 states following Florida’s example,” Christine adds. “If you live in one of these states, you can enter your ECI in just a minute or two on the state’s department of motor vehicle website, and you’re providing peace of mind and even possibly help in case of an emergency.”

(Want to know if your state has an ECI system? See map below. States in GREEN have an ECI system in place.)

WATCH: See this video from Sugar Beech Video  about To Inform Families First”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx9A0f1Y_GE

WHAT YOU CAN DO

IF YOU ARE IN ONE OF THE 18 STATES WHICH HAVE NEXT-OF-KIN NOTIFICATION: You can click here for a one-click connection to your state to register ECI:  https://toinformfamiliesfirst.org/register/

Or, go to your state dept. of motor vehicles website and look for the next of kin notification. The states are:

Alabama
Arkansas
Colorado
Delaware
Florida
Illinois
Indiana
Kentucky
Minnesota
New Jersey
North Dakota
Ohio
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
Tennessee
Texas
Virginia
Wisconsin

If you are elderly, pick an adult son or daughter or neighbor to be your next of kin, and let them know of this choice.

If you are an adult child with elderly parents, work with them to get them signed up for next of kin notification on the website.

 If you are a parent with driving-age teens, be sure to sign up your son or daughter and work with them to educate them about the need for ECI.

IF YOU ARE NOT IN A NEXT-OF-KIN NOTIFICATION STATE, contact your state dept. of motor vehicles and encourage them to adopt next-of-kin emergency notification to be electronically added to your state’s driver’s license.

Click just below for the list. Find your state, and then make a phone call or send an email requesting To Inform Families First ECI to be included in the drivers’ license database in your state.

If you want to be an advocate for adopting ECI in one of the states which doesn’t yet have emergency contact information connected with drivers’ licenses, click here: https://toinformfamiliesfirst.org/advocate/

LISTEN: You can hear eyeoncleveland’s John Kerezy interview Christine Olson here.

PODCAST: “Groove with Portia” dedicated its February 24 podcast to To Inform Families First. Check out that podcast here.

TO FOLLOW TO INFORM FAMILITES FIRST:

Web: https://toinformfamiliesfirst.org/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ToInformFamiliesFirst

“X”: @tiff_org