The Lassy Project App: Community Child Safety Alerts and Today's Alternatives

The Lassy Project was a child safety app with a big idea behind it: if a child goes missing, the people best placed to help in the first minutes are the neighbors nearby. It combined GPS tracking with a network of community volunteers who could receive an alert and start looking. The app was created in response to a real tragedy and generated a lot of attention when it launched. Here is what Lassy did, what happened to it, and how families handle the same worries with the tools available in 2026.

Why Lassy was created

Lassy's founder, John Guydon, started the project after the October 2012 abduction and murder of 10-year-old Jessica Ridgeway, who was taken while walking to school in Westminster, Colorado. Jessica's mother supported the project and spoke publicly about it as part of her daughter's legacy.

The app launched in Colorado in 2013 and 2014 and was endorsed by a number of local police departments there.

How Lassy worked

The design had three layers:

1. Routes and safe zones. Parents mapped their child's usual routes, such as home to school or school to the library, and set the times the child was expected to travel them.
2. Parent alerts. The app followed the child's phone using GPS. If the child left the route or did not arrive when expected, the parent got an alert.
3. The village. If a parent confirmed a child was missing, the alert could be escalated to a network of volunteers who had signed up in that area. They received the child's photo, description and last known location by text message, so even people without smartphones could help.

The community piece was what set Lassy apart. Most tracking apps stop at telling the parent. Lassy tried to turn the neighborhood into an early search party.

What happened to Lassy

Lassy received seed funding and joined a startup mentoring program in 2014, but it does not appear to have grown beyond its early regions. We could not find the app in the App Store in 2026, and its website now shows a parked domain page. If you see it recommended in an old article, it isn't something you can sign up for today.

What families use now

The core features of Lassy, location sharing and alerts when a child arrives or leaves a place, are now built into the phones most kids carry.

• Find My (Apple). Family members in a Family Sharing group can share their location with each other. You can set notifications when someone arrives at or leaves a place, such as school. Our guide to location sharing on iOS covers setup.
• Google Family Link (Android). Parents can see a supervised child's device location and set up notifications for arrivals and departures.
• Family location apps. Apps such as Life360 add features like driving reports and crash detection, with paid tiers for more.
• Kids' smartwatches. For younger children who aren't ready for a phone, Apple Watch with Apple's Family Setup, or other kids' watches, can share location and make calls to approved contacts.

What none of these offer is Lassy's volunteer network. In a real emergency, the community alert role is played by police, AMBER Alerts and, increasingly, local social media groups.

Using location tools without overdoing it

Location sharing can bring real peace of mind, but it can also strain trust if it is used without discussion. A few principles help.

1. Tell your child. Secret tracking tends to backfire when kids find out. Explain why you want it and when you'll check.
2. Match it to age. Younger kids walking to school alone are a clear case for arrival alerts. For older teens, consider agreeing on specific situations, like late nights or road trips.
3. Keep it in the family. Make sure your child isn't also sharing location with a wider circle on social apps. Snap Map, for example, can show location to friends; our guide to keeping your child's location private shows where to check.
4. Have an offline plan. Phones die and lose signal. Make sure your child knows your phone number by heart, has a safe adult to go to on their route, and knows what to do if someone they don't know approaches them.

Teaching kids personal safety

Technology was only ever one piece of Lassy's approach. The most important safety tools are still the skills kids carry with them:

• Know your full name, address and a parent's phone number.
• Walk with a buddy when possible, and stick to agreed routes.
• Trusted adults never ask you to keep secrets from your parents or to go somewhere with them without checking first.
• It is always okay to yell, run and tell if someone makes you feel unsafe.
• Check in when you arrive.

For a broader approach to safety conversations, see our guide on how to talk with kids about online safety.

The bottom line

Lassy was an early attempt to combine GPS and community action, and while it is no longer around, its ideas live on in today's family location tools. Use this checklist:

• Choose one location tool for the family, such as Find My or Family Link.
• Set arrival and departure alerts for key places like school.
• Tell your child about it and agree on when it's used.
• Turn off location sharing in social apps.
• Practice offline safety skills, not just app settings.