I hope everything turns out all right.

"After leaving the bar, we believe Tracy texted a friend to let him know she was going home." <-- Has anyone asked her friends if she sent them a text message that night?

(these should be obvious, but there was no indication, from what I've read, that these avenues were explored)

I would assume the latter (txt msg) refers to the possibility that the text message was not sent by her but sent by someone whom has been involved in her disappearance. There was a text message from her phone to a friend, but they don't know if she actually sent it. That's my assumption about what it means anyway.

The post mentions: "here is the information we can share". I am guessing they whetted it out with the police and deliberately didn't mention the security cameras and other specifics.

"November 7, 2011 at 9:15am PDT - We are relieved to share that Tracy Williams is indeed alive and safe at a local hospital. We want to thank everyone who helped spread the word about Tracy's disappearance."

Source: http://technorati.com/women/article/missing-person-tracy-wil...

PS. 112 in Europe.

(edit) I meant to say that American 911 is European 112. I don't know if the police in European countries is supposed to react to dropped 112 calls or not. In Canada and in the US it is. A friend of mine saw it in action. He saw something, dialed, realized it wasn't a big deal, hung up, walked away 100 m, then, boom - not 2 minutes later a fire truck and a police car exactly where he called from. Their precision was really freaky.

the thing is, 'europe' is a true overgeneralization, every country has different qualities of handling 112 emergency calls.

It puffed up his chest a bit, but we talked about emergencies, how to get help, why we don't call 911 unless it's an emergency, etc.

I suppose if everyone did it they wouldn't be agreeable, but no one does, so you should too. :)

This explains. My old phone with a physical keyboard would allow me to dial 112 even when it was locked.

It's a bit of a problem in some countries - you get a lot of 'butt dialed' 112 calls - and the protocol in many jurisdictions if you have an emergency call and no voice is to assume the worst and send fire+police+medics

Following the advice above is very dangerous.

Full disclosure: I interned with them a few years ago when they were a startup out of Berkeley. Looks like they've grown a lot since then.

Tracy could have left the bar like her co-workers assumed, only to have some sort of medical emergency (heart attack? Seizure? Hit by a car?).

When walking around alone in SF, I'm actually irrationally afraid of getting hit by a car and nobody knowing what happened to me. So yeah, if this is what happened that would be terrible and one of my worst nightmares come true.

..or to put it more bluntly: this is not appropriate for HN.

This should allow people to be more vigilant and people are more likely to be paying attention to incoming messages on their phones than on FB whereby I have to be logged in first.

http://technorati.com/women/article/missing-person-tracy-wil...