On any given day, you will find 10 or more Mesa County Sheriff’s Office Records Unit personnel processing open records requests, conceal carry permit applications, or merging field reports with dispatch reports. Those are just a few of the immensely important roles our records unit personnel conquer every day.

However, there’s also a role that takes on a first responder aspect: entering and distributing missing persons reports. These entries can - and do - save lives.

Lini Mills is a law enforcement records specialist for the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office; specifically, Lini oversees the Colorado Bureau of Investigations (CBI) terminal, where reports and responses from CBI roll through. This job includes the review, entry, and distribution of missing persons reports from our agency and beyond.

On October 30, 2025, around 3:45 p.m., Lini received a phone call from Deputy Josh Quigley requesting an endangered missing person report be entered and distributed. Within 15 minutes, the information was received: a 92-year-old male with dementia and several other medical conditions had gone missing from his residence, along with his car. 

Deputy Quigley had one more request: could a Silver Alert be issued for the missing senior male? 

Lini and Records Unit Supervisor Beth Boydstun paused - neither had issued a Silver Alert before, but that wasn’t going to stop them. Without hesitation, Beth reached out to Colorado Bureau of Investigations to get the ball rolling on a Silver Alert while Lini completed the endangered missing persons be on the look out (BOLO) notification.

By 4:30 p.m. - just 45 minutes after the initial phone call from Deputy Quigley - the BOLO was out and the Silver Alert was minutes from being published.

And then a notification. The missing persons report alerted that an agency in Southern Utah, had just run the missing man’s license plate. Lini notified Beth, who called the dispatch center in Cedar City, UT. At that moment, Utah Highway Patrol was out with the missing man. The officer had run the man’s license plate via dispatch, connecting to the missing persons report Lini had completed just 15 minutes prior. 

The Utah Highway Patrol officer was connected with Deputy Quigley, who notified the man’s son. The two would be reunited soon all thanks to the immense teamwork and collaboration between Patrol, Records, and the Colorado Bureau of Investigations - along with a few serendipitous moments and acts of goodwill:

1. Lini was wrapping up work for the day when Deputy Quigley called in with the missing persons report. Without a second thought, she chose to stay long past the end of her day to ensure the report was completed and filed with the maximum information available - like the plate number for the car. Often, the plate number is not included or cannot be included as it is unknown. In this instance, it was known and included, and turned out to be the defining factor in identifying the missing man.

2. A construction worker in Utah noticed the missing man pulled over on the side of the road looking disoriented and confused. Knowing this was not normal, the construction worker called in a welfare check, leading to the series of events that identified the man as the missing endangered senior.

3. When a law enforcement officer or agency tries to find the closest match to a record, the queries rarely match exactly. In this case, it did match exactly. Additionally, because Lini was still at her CBI terminal paying close attention, she caught the match alert, prompting Beth to proactively reach out to dispatch in Cedar City, Utah.

In all, the male was officially listed as a missing person for all of 15 minutes. Thanks to the immediate reaction from Lini, the missing man’s information was distributed efficiently and with great detail, allowing the actions of Deputy Quigley, the Colorado Bureau of Investigations, the construction worker, Utah State Patrol, and Cedar City dispatch to fall in line perfectly for a positive outcome. 

Law enforcement records personnel are far more than “just records” - they’re the heartbeat of the agency and, sometimes, they’re first responders, too