🏆 Coolest Projects USA 2026 · AI Category Winner

ZaLayaa Jahzara
Founder & Creator

She is 13. She is Black. She lives with 40+ invisible medical conditions. She looked for a tool that would protect a child like her — and built it when she found nothing.

Minnesota National Advocate & Speaker Medical Zebra · 40+ Conditions Youth AI Innovator Golfer · Chess · Artist · Coder Biomedical Engineering
🏆
Coolest Projects USA 2026 · Science Museum of Minnesota
AI Category Winner — April 11, 2026
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ZaLayaa Jahzara Wandrick — Creator of FIND ME ASAP
ZaLayaa Jahzara Wandrick · Age 13

Who She Is

ZaLayaa Jahzara Wandrick is 13 years old. She is from Minnesota. She is the founder, creator, and sole inventor of FIND ME ASAP — and she is the child this platform was built for.

She lives with more than 40 invisible medical conditions — conditions that are not visible on her face or in her behavior at a glance, but that determine everything about how she must be handled in an emergency. Before FIND ME ASAP, none of this would have been communicated to the person who found her, the first responder who arrived, or the ER that treated her.

She is a national advocate and speaker. A youth AI innovator with a deep interest in biomedical engineering and computer science. A golfer. A chess player. A coder who builds what the world needs before the world knows it needs it.


What She Saw That No One Had Fixed

1 in 3
Missing children in the US are Black — while Black children are only 14% of the population
Delayed
AMBER Alerts, less media coverage, less urgency — a structural failure built into every existing tool
0
Personalized emergency tools for children with invisible disabilities before this platform existed

ZaLayaa Jahzara watched girls who look like her go missing. She watched children with invisible disabilities be mishandled — not out of cruelty, but out of ignorance. An officer runs toward a child with autism and the child flees. A bystander grabs the arm of a child with EDS and dislocates her shoulder. A child goes nonverbal and is assumed to be lying.

When she searched for a tool to help a family in the first minutes of a child going missing, she found a government PDF from 2017. No interactivity. No personalization. Unchanged for nearly a decade, for a crisis that kills within hours.


Why She Built Instead of Waited

She did not write a letter to a government agency. She did not wait for a nonprofit to respond. She did not ask an adult to fix it. She opened an IDE and started building.

"I looked for something that would help a family the moment a child went missing. I found a government PDF. Nothing that does anything. So I built it."

— ZaLayaa Jahzara, Creator, FIND ME ASAP

She is the child this system had no tools for. She did not just understand this problem — she has always lived inside it. FIND ME ASAP is the result: a complete emergency response platform built by a 13-year-old Black girl with 40+ invisible conditions, for every child the system left out.


What FIND ME ASAP Actually Does

FIND ME ASAP is an AI-powered emergency response platform. A parent or caregiver opens it the moment a child goes missing, answers 5 questions, and receives a complete personalized emergency kit in under 2 minutes. No account required. No download. No setup. It works the instant it is needed — because the moment it is needed, there is no time.

The AI personalization is what makes FIND ME ASAP unlike anything that came before it. Every document generated is specific to the child's race, age, documented disabilities, medical conditions, and communication needs. A Black 7-year-old with autism who is nonverbal receives a completely different kit than a white 12-year-old with no medical history — because those two children require completely different responses from every person involved in finding them.

The Found Alert Flag™ — A World First

At the top of every document FIND ME ASAP generates sits the Found Alert Flag™. This is the most important innovation in the platform. It is a medical and behavioral alert card that appears before the child's name, before their photo. It tells anyone who finds this child — a bystander, a store employee, a first responder — exactly what they need to know before they say a single word.

The wrong approach in the first 30 seconds is not neutral. It causes active harm. A sudden movement toward a child with EDS can dislocate a joint. A loud or authoritative tone aimed at a child with autism can cause them to flee. Forcing a child with POTS to stand can trigger a syncopal episode. The Found Alert Flag™ addresses all of this, tier by tier, before any contact is made. It does not exist on any government platform, any nonprofit flyer system, or any existing missing child app in the world.

🚩 Found Alert Flag™ — How the Tier System Works
Purple — Approach
Tells the finder exactly how to physically approach this specific child. Distance. Speed. Posture. What not to do. Every child receives different instructions based on their conditions — a child with autism requires 10 feet of space; a child with EDS must not have their joints grabbed.
Red — Medical Alert
Life-critical medical information. POTS positioning requirements. EDS joint protection protocols. Mast cell trigger warnings. Seizure response instructions. Medication timing alerts. This tier appears first for children with urgent medical needs — it can prevent a medical emergency during recovery.
Orange — Communication & Sensory
How to speak to this child — or whether to speak at all. Nonverbal children require written communication only. Sensory instructions: whether sirens must be kept away, crowds dispersed, lights dimmed. Sensory overload can cause a safe recovery to become a traumatic one.
Yellow — Identity Protection
A direct statement of the child's age and race — and a directive that this child is a missing child, not a runaway. For Black children, this tier explicitly names the systemic misclassification that delays response and costs lives. It is not optional. It is in every kit.

The 10 Documents Generated Instantly

In under 2 minutes, FIND ME ASAP generates a complete emergency kit containing 10 personalized documents:

01
Found Alert Flag™
4-tier behavioral and medical alert card for anyone who finds the child — before they say a single word.
02
Action Checklist
Timed steps for the first 15 minutes, 15–60 minutes, and Hours 1–3. Specific, actionable, and sequenced.
03
Missing Child Flyer
Print-ready flyer with Found Alert Flag™ at the top, photo placeholder, and QR code to full alert instructions.
04
Dispatcher Script
Exact words to say when calling 911 — including how to communicate the child's conditions to dispatch.
05
NCMEC Brief
Structured intake document for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children — 1-800-843-5678.
06
Medical Emergency Sheet
All conditions, medications, dosage timing, known triggers, allergy alerts, and ER hospital information.
07
Alert Guide
AMBER Alert eligibility, Ebony Alert guidance, ADAM Program, and every alert system that applies to this child.
08
Search Team Briefing
Where to look first, how far the child could travel, behavioral search guidance specific to their conditions.
09
Social Media Kit
Platform-specific posts ready to copy for Facebook, Instagram, X, and Nextdoor — formatted for maximum reach.
10
Media Outreach Release
A complete press release and TV news pitch ready for local stations — because media coverage saves lives.

The Full Platform

FIND ME ASAP is not a single tool. It is a complete system built around the full arc of a missing child event — from the first minute of panic through active search through community coordination and ongoing monitoring.

🚨
Emergency Kit Generator
Answers 5 questions and generates a complete 10-document kit personalized to this specific child in under 2 minutes.
📡
Live Response Tracker
Real-time action tracker that logs every step taken, timestamps every decision, and keeps the response organized under pressure.
📣
Live Briefing Broadcast
Broadcasts a live situation briefing to a shareable link — so search teams, community members, and responders all have the same information in real time.
👤
Child Profile Builder
Stores a child's complete profile — photo, conditions, medications, physical description, behavioral notes — so the kit generates instantly when needed.
📊
Parent Dashboard
Central hub showing all children's profiles, kit history, saved documents, and response status across every session.
🤝
Community Resources
Curated directory of community watch networks, local alert systems, and family support organizations.
📋
Conditions Reference
Searchable library of over 40 invisible conditions — what they are, how they affect a missing child scenario, and what first responders must know.
🤖
AI Assistant
An AI advisor trained on missing child response protocols — answers questions, explains options, and guides families through decisions they have never had to make before.

The Numbers Behind the Platform

375K+
Children reported missing in the US every year — over 1,000 per day
1 in 3
Missing children are Black — while Black children are just 14% of the US child population
74%
Of abducted children who are killed are killed within the first 3 hours — time is everything
40+
Invisible conditions covered by the platform — built in because ZaLayaa lives them

Black children are labeled runaways at higher rates than white children exhibiting identical behavior. They receive delayed AMBER Alerts. They receive less media coverage per case. Their families receive less institutional support. FIND ME ASAP was built to close this gap — to give every family, especially the families most failed by current systems, a real tool that thinks for them in the worst moment of their life.

Children with invisible disabilities face a separate but overlapping crisis. When they are found, they are frequently mishandled — not out of malice, but out of ignorance. A child who cannot speak is assumed to be withholding information. A child who flees when touched is assumed to be resisting. The Found Alert Flag™ system exists to put the right information in front of the right person, in the first 30 seconds, every time.

FIND ME ASAP is free. No account. No download. No subscription. No barrier between a family and the tool they need.


"This platform exists because I am the child it was made for. I am Black. I have conditions that make me medically complex in ways no one can see. I speak in front of thousands of people and I have always known: if I got lost in this crowd, no one would know what to do. I am not building this for someone else. I am building it for me, and for every child who looks like me and lives like me and deserves a system that does not forget they exist."

— ZaLayaa Jahzara, Age 13, Creator & Founder · FIND ME ASAP

Build the Kit Before You Need It

FIND ME ASAP is free. It requires no account, no download, and no setup.
The best time to build an emergency kit is before an emergency happens.


Contact ZaLayaa

Press inquiries, partnership requests, speaking invitations, and feedback are all welcome.

📧 zaynichelove@gmail.com    Full Contact Page