A 73-year-old Germantown woman with a medical condition that police say could impair her ability to get home safely has been found safe in Memphis, closing out a Silver Alert that had law enforcement and residents watching for a red 2003 Cadillac DeVille. Mary Phillips was last seen Wednesday afternoon near Woodridge Lane in Germantown, and by that evening she had been located safe just miles away in Memphis.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation announced the safe recovery on Facebook Wednesday night, confirming Phillips had been found in Memphis. The Germantown Police Department had issued the Silver Alert earlier that day, describing Phillips as 5 feet 3 inches tall and about 160 pounds, with brown hair and hazel eyes. According to the Germantown Police Department, she was wearing a floral shirt, blue shorts, and blue slippers when she was last seen driving what officers described as a maroon Cadillac DeVille, though the TBI alert listed the same 2003 model in red, bearing Tennessee tag BLD0384.
How the Search Crossed City Lines
Germantown and Memphis sit right next to each other in Shelby County, with Germantown located roughly 21 miles southeast of downtown Memphis and sharing a direct western border with East Memphis. That proximity means a disoriented driver leaving a Germantown neighborhood like Woodridge Lane could reach Memphis streets within minutes, which is exactly the kind of scenario Tennessee's Silver Alert system is built to address quickly.
Under Tennessee Code § 38-6-121, the state's Silver Alert program lets law enforcement issue statewide alerts for missing people age 60 or older, or adults with physical or cognitive impairments, who are believed to be in danger and unable to return home without help. State guidelines require local agencies to launch an investigation immediately after receiving a missing vulnerable person report and to notify the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation within four hours if the criteria are met, according to the County Technical Assistance Service. Before any statewide alert goes out, local law enforcement guidelines also require departments to log the missing person report into the FBI's National Crime Information Center database, as Hoodline reported in its coverage of a separate Chattanooga case earlier this week.
A Statewide System Built for Speed
Tennessee overhauled its missing adult notification framework in May 2021 under Public Chapter 350, replacing the former Care Alert program with a centralized Silver Alert system managed by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. The agency further modernized the process in January 2025 by launching the TBI Find mobile app and the SafeSeniorTN.com web portal, which allow citizens to receive real-time notifications when a vulnerable adult goes missing, per reporting from WATE-TV. The TBI Find app was cited in the original alert for Phillips as a resource offering details on the Silver Alert program.
The system has a strong track record. During the 2021–2022 fiscal year alone, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation issued 122 Silver Alerts across 42 counties, resulting in 110 safe recoveries, including 14 people found outside Tennessee entirely. More recently, Tennessee law enforcement issued more than 60 Silver Alerts statewide in just the first six months of 2024, a volume that prompted state officials and senior advocacy groups to urge families to prepare emergency profile kits in advance, according to WBIR-TV.
In Shelby County specifically, coordination between suburban and city police departments plays a role in how quickly these cases resolve. The Memphis Police Department's policy manual sets a target of executing Silver Alert protocols within four hours of initial notification and sending alert summaries to regional media within 12 hours, ensuring nearby departments stay in sync when a missing person crosses from one jurisdiction into another, as happened when Phillips was found in Memphis after going missing in Germantown.
Anyone with information related to the case can still contact the Germantown Police Department at 901-754-7222 or reach the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation at 1-800-TBI-FIND. Phillips' safe recovery adds to a string of similar outcomes in the region; Hoodline previously reported on another Shelby County recovery and on a Silver Alert issued for 71-year-old Eugene Sturdivant in Memphis last November.
