BATON ROUGE — A Louisiana law now adds a special designation to existing missing person alerts when that individual has a qualifying cognitive disability, and one local mother says it could save lives.

Miranda Georgetown Riley, a mom of three kids diagnosed with autism, knows firsthand how quickly things can go wrong. She created the Magnolia Rose Foundation, named after her oldest child, to build inclusive experiences for kids with disabilities.

Last week, one of her children unexpectedly ran off while she was getting the kids out of the car.

"I had to close my other kids in the car and run after my child," Riley said. "And there's an abandoned pool right around the corner from us. And so if I wouldn't have known where she was or whatever."

Riley says many children with autism are drawn to water. Last year, 12-year-old Bryan Vasquez climbed out of his bedroom window and was later found dead, drowned with blunt trauma consistent with an alligator attack.

His death inspired Bryan's Call, a new designation added to Louisiana's missing person alert system for children and adults with cognitive disabilities. The bill was officially signed into law on May 22.

State Rep. Troy Hebert, R-Lafayette, spoke in support of the bill before it passed.

"This is a much-needed bill, and this is a good bill for the state of Louisiana, and I ask that you pass it," Hebert said.

Riley says the added awareness could save lives, pointing to where searches should begin.

"In acceptance that we have to look for this child in the first places that we need to look are bodies of water, pools, ponds, little lakes or whatever, streams, canals," Riley said. "They're so drawn to water. The statistics are now that eight autistic children will die from drowning through elopement."

Bryan's Call does not create a separate alert system. It adds a special designation to alerts that already exist, helping notify the public when a missing person has a qualifying disability.

Riley says the designation matters most when time is critical.

"The call is so important because the more people out there, because if Magnolia is running and I'm running after her, even David James, they turn around and laugh and smile," Riley said. "They're not going to stop if I'm calling their name. So the more people out there, the more people are aware of where they could be in the vicinity, the more people are looking; it helps us get these kids home safe."