(NewsNation) — In 2017, Afghanistan war veteran Corey Adams went missing after failing to appear at an appointment at the Milwaukee Veterans Administration Medical Center.

Adams had been suffering from PTSD for several years, but his family was unable to convince the police to immediately act. It took them eight days to launch an investigation, and Adams was tragically found lifeless in a pond weeks later. His death was ruled as a suicide.

The tragedy weighed heavily on Wisconsin state Sen. LaTonya Johnson, who knew Adams’ family since 2012. After his death, her office looked for ways they could prevent future tragedies.

“We thought about when there’s a missing child there’s an AMBER alert, if there’s a missing elderly person, there’s a Silver Alert. Well, why not a ‘Green Alert’? You know, for missing veterans, especially [those] that had injuries as a result of their tours of duty?” she said.

One year after Adams’ death, Johnson convinced her colleagues to pass a bill authorizing the nation’s first Green Alert system.

It works much like other missing person systems. When a law enforcement agency receives a report about a missing veteran who is at risk, they first determine if there’s reason to believe it’s due to a physical or mental health condition.

After, they will decide if there’s enough information available to them to distribute that could help in locating the missing person.

Once those determinations are made, authorities can issue a Green Alert. This can include notifying the public via text message and email, and informing the local news outlets.

The system has been activated 32 times, according to Johnson. She did not have numbers on hand about how many of those alerts resulted in finding a missing person but noted there have been several cases of people being located.

Among them was Eric John Burmeister, a 45-year-old veteran who went missing in Kewaskum, Wisconsin. He was quickly located last year after a Green Alert was issued.

Since Wisconsin adopted its Green Alert system in 2018, multiple states have picked up the policy. There is also a bill in Congress to support states who want to set up their own Green Alert systems.

Some critics of the Green Alert system, however, have raised concerns about veteran privacy. One Wisconsin veteran who was the subject of a Green Alert told NPR in 2019 that it “felt very violating” when he found out his name and mental health information was being broadcasted across electronic billboards and on radio and television.

Johnson is aware of the criticism, noting some veterans might just need to step away from society and aren’t in danger of harming themselves. But she insisted that the system has a real impact.

“For the vast majority of those individuals who … need that extra help … the difference between this Green Alert, especially somebody contemplating suicide, and their ability to be found gives that family and our mental health experts an opportunity to intervene, to make sure their life isn’t lost,” she said.

Ultimately, Johnson’s goal is to prevent more tragedies like the one that took Corey Adams’ life.

“The one thing that I think that I’ll never be able to shake is wanting to save Corey because I knew his mom and his sister and his dad and how it affected his family and his children after his passing,” she said. “And I’ll never be able to bring him back. But the thing that gives me solace and gives me pace for this family is knowing that his life and the fact that we missed the ball, that we didn’t go out and look for him, now has the ability to change lives all over this country.”