Adams County Deputies Search for Missing 13-Year-Old Jody Hunt, Last Seen in Purple Crocs

A 13-year-old girl has been missing from unincorporated Adams County since last Thursday, prompting state officials to issue an Endangered Missing Alert as investigators and advocates scramble for leads. Jody Hunt was last seen near 3100 Hooker Street on August 20 at 8 a.m., wearing a grey hoodie, black sweatpants and purple Crocs, according to the alert. She is described as 5 feet 2 inches tall, weighing about 100 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes.

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation classified Jody as a high-risk missing juvenile in the alert it activated Wednesday. The state agency issues an Endangered Missing Alert, sometimes called a Media Alert, when a missing person is believed to be in danger but the case does not meet the statutory criteria for an AMBER Alert or another specialized alert, per the Colorado Bureau of Investigation's own guidelines on activation criteria.

That distinction matters for what happens next. Once activated, the state broadcasts the child's details to participating television and radio stations across Colorado and can work with the Colorado Department of Transportation to post vehicle information on highway message signs, though that step depends on whether a suspect or vehicle has been identified — details that have not been made public in Jody's case.

A Pattern of Prior Disappearances in North Denver

This is not the first time Jody has gone missing from the Denver-Westminster area. Missing child alerts and social media posts from local advocacy groups indicate she was previously reported missing from the same corridor in December 2025 and again in March 2026. Law enforcement generally treats a pattern like this as a high-risk juvenile runaway situation, though officials have not attributed a specific cause to her latest disappearance, and it remains unverified why she left or whether she had contact with anyone online beforehand.

Jurisdiction over the search falls to the Adams County Sheriff's Office, which polices unincorporated pockets of the county — including streets near Denver, Westminster and Sherrelwood — that sit outside municipal city police boundaries. The sheriff's office, founded in 1902 and among Colorado's oldest county law enforcement agencies, is leading the investigation in coordination with the state bureau.

How the State and Local Agencies Are Coordinating

Colorado protocol requires that once a missing child report is filed, officers enter the juvenile's information into the Colorado Crime Information Center and the National Crime Information Center, linking the case to national databases used by law enforcement across jurisdictions. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation, established in 1967 and headquartered in Lakewood with more than 330 personnel, operates as a by-request agency that offers this kind of specialized investigative and alert support to local police and sheriffs statewide.

Anyone who spots Jody is asked to call 911 immediately or contact the Adams County Sheriff's Office at 303-288-1535. The sheriff's office is headquartered at 4430 S. Adams County Parkway in Brighton.

The Broader Picture on Missing Children

Cases like Jody's unfold against a backdrop of enormous caseloads nationally. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children assisted law enforcement with 32,167 missing child cases in 2025 and reported recovering 90 percent of those juveniles, according to the organization's 2025 annual data release. That same report found the center received 1.4 million reports of online youth enticement last year, a 158 percent jump over 2024 — a trend investigators nationally have flagged as an increasingly common factor intersecting with teenage runaway and missing-child cases, though no such connection has been confirmed in Jody's case.

For now, key questions remain unanswered: why Jody left, whether she was in contact with anyone before she disappeared, and whether search teams have identified any specific leads in the unincorporated stretch of Adams County where she was last seen. The Adams County Sheriff's Office has not released further updates beyond the initial alert.