Tampa Police are searching for 59-year-old Sharon Diane Johnson, who went missing Thursday afternoon from the area of the 1800 block of North Oregon Avenue. Officers consider her endangered due to cognitive limitations, and a missing and endangered alert went out shortly after she disappeared.
Johnson is described as a Black female standing approximately 5 feet 2 inches tall and weighing around 190 pounds, according to Tampa Free Press. She was last seen wearing a pink Trek jacket, a hot pink shirt, pink and tan pants, and hot pink sandals. Tampa Police officers are actively searching the area and have asked neighbors, drivers, and business owners nearby to keep an eye out for her.
The 1800 block of North Oregon Avenue sits in the historic Old West Tampa neighborhood, an urban area of single-family homes and infill apartment housing close to transit corridors along West Main Street and Interstate 275, according to FOX 13 Tampa Bay. That mix of dense residential blocks and nearby highway access underscores why police are leaning on residents and local businesses to check security footage and report any sightings.
How Tampa Police Are Handling the Search
The department urges anyone who spots Johnson to contact authorities immediately by calling 813-231-6130. The report notes that Tampa Police process missing person cases through sworn affidavits across district offices, then enter missing endangered details into the Florida Crime Information Center so regional agencies can coordinate, per the City of Tampa. There is no mandatory waiting period before officers accept and process a missing endangered adult report, according to guidance from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which helps explain why an alert went out so soon after Johnson disappeared.
Police issued a Missing and Endangered Alert for Johnson. Separately, Florida's Purple Alert framework, created under Florida Statute § 937.0205, helps locate missing adults with intellectual, developmental, or non-dementia cognitive disabilities whose disappearance poses an immediate threat of danger or harm, according to First Coast News. Under the framework, searches involving pedestrians or unidentified vehicles are restricted to Local Purple Alerts distributed within surrounding communities, as detailed in a Fort Lauderdale alert reported by Hoodline. Statewide alerts are reserved for cases with an identified vehicle.
Why Vulnerable Adults Face Added Risk
Public safety research cited by state legislators shows that adults with cognitive or developmental disabilities face significant risks of disorientation and wandering, making immediate public reporting and neighborhood checks critical in the first hours of a disappearance, according to Fresh Take Florida. That vulnerability is part of why law enforcement statewide has leaned heavily on the Purple Alert system since it launched in 2022.
During the program's first two years, between July 2022 and July 2024, Florida agencies issued 447 Purple Alerts statewide, resulting in 438 missing individuals being safely recovered, per WTSP. In 2024 alone, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement issued 404 total missing person alerts statewide, including 121 Purple Alerts and 190 State Silver Alerts. Nationally, over 600,000 people go missing each year, with Florida ranking among the top three states for open missing person cases alongside California and Texas, according to data cited by World Population Review.
How to Report a Sighting
Anyone with information on Johnson's whereabouts can also reach Florida's Missing Endangered Persons Information Clearinghouse, a statewide repository that began as MCIC in 1983 and was renamed MEPIC in 2008, and that operates a toll-free hotline at 1-888-356-4774 to support local police agencies. Tampa Police have not indicated whether the case has been escalated beyond the local alert level.
