By Nicole Quigley
Special to The Islander
One morning in early 2006, Christine Olson parked outside her job at the Rod & Reel pier, where she was a server, wondering how she could make it one more day.
She sat in the car and prayed. “God, this is too hard. I’m not going to make it. You have to dry up these tears.”
Olson was looking for a sign that her daughter, Tiffiany, was OK, even though the unthinkable had happened.
Just weeks before, on Dec. 7, Olson’s son, Derek, called her at 11:20 p.m.
“Mom, she’s been involved in an accident. Get to Manatee Memorial,” Derek said. He had received a call from a friend that Tiffiany was involved in a motorcycle crash.
They raced to the Bradenton hospital, where the ER nurses could offer no information, no news of whether Tiffiany had been air-lifted to another hospital, nothing.
So mother and son waited outside by the door to the ER, waiting for an answer.
Finally, a security guard contacted highway patrol. At 1:30 a.m., a deputy arrived holding an evidence bag containing Tiffiany’s lip-gloss, a broken earring and other items.
“Sorry, she’s gone,” he said.
“Where?” Olson asked. “To another hospital?
“No,” he said. “I presume she has gone to the medical examiner. They are closed, but you can call them in the morning.”
Tiffiany and her boyfriend were driving northbound on U.S. Highway 19 in Palmetto to a Clearwater restaurant for Wednesday night “bike night.” Before they reached the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, at 7:05 p.m., a drunk driver traveling westbound pulled in front of them.
Tiffiany died on impact. Her boyfriend died about 30 minutes later.
Tiffiany’s driver’s license did not have her current address, so the police had no way to contact her next of kin.
“I was in panic mode the whole time I was waiting. In my heart, I thought she was hurt and she was crying for her mom. She’s my baby. And nobody was there to help,” Olson said.
The loss of Olson’s only daughter, compounded by the events of that evening, brought her to her lowest point.
The Olson family held a service for Tiffiany on the only day the Rod & Reel restaurant is closed, Christmas.
But Olson, a committed Christian, was searching for hope that her daughter was well, at rest, and that she would see her again.
“And then the morning came when I didn’t know how I could go on,” Olson said. “I prayed for God to dry up my tears. I went into work and I had a woman customer. She seemed like a fisherman. She ordered a glass of water and a cup of chowder. Her meal was $3.13. She left the money on the table with a card that quoted the words of Jesus in Matthew 11:28, ‘Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.’”
For Olson, it was an answer to her prayer.
Olson decided no one else should ever have to endure the same debilitating delay.
“I was 15 minutes away but it took over six hours to notify me. How is it possible that it took that long in this day and age of technology to notify her mother? The delay was no one’s fault. Back then, there were no resources available. But that’s the way it was and still is in many communities,” Olson said.
Her idea was to be able to add emergency contact information to a state driver’s license or state-issued ID because all Tiffiany had on her was her license.
A co-worker suggested she start a petition. The idea of “To Inform Families First” or TIFF — named after Olson’s daughter — was born.
Olson dropped by The Islander office with her petition and Bonner Joy, publisher, helped her contact then-state Rep. Bill Galvano, who championed Olson’s idea with the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles and law enforcement agencies.
They quickly learned the system — DAVID — already existed.
And within two months, the DMV was fully on board.
It was simple. Information entered into the Florida Driver And Vehicle Information Database is only accessible by law enforcement through a driver’s license or identification card. When the system came online on Oct. 2, 2006, Olson was at the DMV with Galvano to be the first registrant.
Today, more than 19 million Floridians have registered their emergency contacts.
More than 15 states have adopted the concept and Olson hopes it will soon go national.
“I’ve received calls from states across the country wondering how they can adopt TIFF. In Maine, for example, they called because kids were overdosing and they needed to contact families,” Olson said.
Olson said one of TIFF’s greatest champions is Manatee County Sheriff Rick Wells, who often helps get the word out about the importance of the system and invites anyone to call his office to learn more about it.
“I’ve been doing this for 37 years. In the old days, when we had a serious emergency or death investigation, we would have to do a lot of investigation to find family members. Sometimes they would be close but sometimes they would be out of state. It could take a whole day just to find the next of kin. Now we have it in a matter of seconds,” Wells said.
When law enforcement swipes a driver’s license into a computer, the officer sees who the individual wants to be notified in an emergency.
“You’re talking about going from several hours to several seconds of having this information available. I encourage people to sign up. If you’re not doing it for yourselves, do it for your family members. It’s a valuable tool, and it works. And they can thank Christine Olson for that,” Wells said.
This year is the 15th anniversary of the initiative. In recognition of its importance, Olson decided to complete the ride that her daughter never got to finish.
On Oct. 23, more than 100 motorcyclists, many of them members of the Tampa Bay Area Cruisers, along with a dozen Jeeps from Bradenton/SRQ Jeep Club, joined Olson in a memorial ride, starting in Bradenton and finishing at the Quaker Stake & Lube restaurant in Clearwater.
Manatee County Commissioner Carol Whitmore helped to organize Manatee, Pinellas and Hillsborough counties to agree to light up the Skyway purple, Tiffiany’s favorite color. They approved the change and the bridge was lit in remembrance Oct. 17-23.
The ride was supported with involvement from the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office, Bradenton Police Department and Mayor Gene Brown, Southern Manatee Fire Rescue and Florida Highway Patrol.
Volunteers from Manatee High School, Tiffiany’s alma mater, and others helped to staff the event.
The ride, including the purple T-shirts and boas for all of the bikers, was sponsored by Fran Haasch Law Firm, Salty Shamrock in Apollo Beach and Enterprise Rent-A-Car.
“I wanted the ride to get national media attention as a big purple wave crossed the Skyway with a hundred bikes and Jeeps,” Olson said. “I want people to sign up and to share this information with five people. We can all do that.”
Olson said that one of the things that helped her in her grief was to serve others.
This, and her faith, Olson, said, has kept her going.
“I was baptized at the beach in June 2005. Tiffiany was there to support me and called me not long after to say, ‘Mom, I accepted the Lord.’ It was a year later she went to meet him. I know I’m going to see my daughter again. I know without a doubt,” Olson said.
“I sometimes wonder, how is it possible that I am creating this change. I’m a server at the Rod & Reel. But I am. I’ve learned, even when you doubt yourself, follow your heart. Do something. And do something for the sake of others.”
Olson offers one piece of advice for others facing grief: “Look up and talk to God about it. There’s no book, no psychology, nothing else. Just look up and ask God to help you. He will.”
After the ride, Olson returned home, driving again over the Skyway.
That evening, she saw the purple lights of the bridge reaching from the water below, seeming to hold up the road, the bridge’s peaks towering above, pointing to the sky.
It was a good sign for Olson.
For more information, visit www.toinformfamiliesfirst.org.