A 25-year-old woman with PTSD, depression and a mild intellectual disability has been missing since Saturday after walking away from an assisted living facility in Southwest Miami-Dade following a disagreement with another resident. Gina Harrison was last seen in the 15100 block of Southwest 141 Court, and Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office deputies are asking the public for help finding her.
According to WSVN 7News, Harrison had a verbal disagreement with another resident before she was last seen. The outlet reports she is 5 feet 10 inches tall, with brown hair and brown eyes, and was last seen wearing a black and red Reebok shirt, red shorts, black shoes and a white jacket, while carrying a black bookbag. The neighborhood where she disappeared sits in an unincorporated part of Southwest Miami-Dade near Richmond West and Country Walk, according to the same report.
Deputies Push for Tips as Search Continues
Officials are urging anyone with information about Harrison's whereabouts to contact authorities. The case has been assigned to MDSO Deputy D. Guzman, who can be reached at 305-715-3300 or 305-715-3292, or by email at [email protected], per the WSVN report. Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers, an independent South Florida public safety nonprofit that collaborates with the sheriff's office on anonymous leads, can also be reached at 305-471-TIPS (8477).
Harrison's case falls under a specific legal category in Florida. Because she is under 26 and lives with a cognitive disability, her disappearance meets the state's definition of a missing endangered person, a designation under Florida Statute Section 937.02 that triggers immediate law enforcement search protocols for young adults or people with mental, cognitive or physical disabilities whose disappearance poses a credible threat of harm.
How Florida's Purple Alert System Works
That statutory framework also opens the door to Florida's Purple Alert system, a tool created under Florida Statute Section 937.0205 specifically to aid searches for missing adults with intellectual, developmental or cognitive disabilities, or brain injuries unrelated to Alzheimer's disease. The alert was designed to bridge a gap between Amber Alerts for missing children and Silver Alerts for missing seniors. In 2024, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement issued 121 Purple Alerts statewide out of 404 total missing person alerts, according to the agency's spring 2025 report.
Harrison's disappearance from an assisted living facility also touches on state rules governing how such facilities handle residents who may wander off, known as elopement risk. Under Florida Administrative Code Rule 59A-36.007, assisted living facilities are required to assess residents for elopement risk within 30 days of admission, keep photo identification accessible to staff and police, and maintain written emergency response procedures for missing residents, according to the Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute. Separately, Florida Statute Section 429.28 establishes a Resident Bill of Rights guaranteeing assisted living facility residents a safe living environment and requiring facilities to maintain adequate staffing and care standards, per the Florida Senate.
Local Sheriff's Unit Has Strong Recovery Record
The search falls to a unit with a notable track record. Between January 1, 2024, and April 24, 2025, the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office Missing Persons Unit was assigned 1,769 missing person cases and recovered 1,653 endangered juveniles and adults, a 93% recovery rate, according to the Florida Missing Children's Day Foundation. Nationally, more than 600,000 missing person reports are filed each year in the United States, and the vast majority are resolved within days, per the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System data cited by World Population Review.
For tips beyond local police channels, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement also maintains a 24-hour Missing Endangered Persons Information Clearinghouse hotline at 1-888-FL-MISSING (1-888-356-4774) to process public leads statewide. As the search for Harrison continues, deputies have not released additional details about the circumstances of her disappearance beyond the disagreement that preceded it.
