In the middle of the night, Albuquerque residents wake up to a new kind of emergency: Silver Alerts lighting up their phones. Sometimes the alerts arrived with the urgency of an Amber Alert.
The latest alert came Sunday. Albuquerque’s police issued a Silver Alert for a missing 68-year-old woman, Lisha. It came just four days after authorities had alerted the public about another missing 76-year-old.James
What gives why Silver Alerts become common?
In 2025, state lawmakers passed House Bill 197, which Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed into law. The measure loosened the rules for issuing Silver Alerts, making it easier for authorities to activate the system. The new law took effect in June 2025.
Under the old rule, the police required a formal medical diagnosis or their independent determination that a missing person showed a clear indication of irreversible cognitive decline. That has changed under the new law. The new rules require only a report from someone who believes a missing person is displaying signs of Alzheimer’s disease or other cognitive impairment to help trigger the alert.
That means families don’t necessarily have to wait for a formal diagnosis before authorities can act.
And then came another major change. In July 2025, the New Mexico State Police began pushing Silver Alerts directly to mobile phones through the Wireless Emergency Alert system, the same system used for Amber Alerts and other high-priority government warnings.
Before that, Silver Alerts were more likely to appear through social media, television and radio broadcasts, news reports and electronic billboards.
These alerts make a missing senior become a statewide emergency, with notifications lighting up thousands of phones, giving the Silver Alerts a visibility they never had before.
The Albuquerque Police Department has been right in requesting statewide or regional Silver Alerts amid the spikes of missing-person cases. Recently, several APD-related alerts have kept the notifications coming.
The new rule, however, sparked complaints about what some residents. One resident responding to an APD post summed up the frustration in the comments. “You are all getting more silver alerts because they have now removed restrictions allowing them more flexibility to issue them.”
Silver Alerts have had high success rates. Data showed a success rate of about 9 in 10 to 10 in 10 cases.
Some residents may see it as an annoying new normal. That blaring notification, however, could be the difference between another frightening night and a safe return home for a missing elderly person.
