Gabby Petito’s Family Launch Foundation to Help Find Missing Persons

Gabby Petito's family members are honoring her memory with the launch of a new foundation to help find missing persons and help support organizations that assist victims of domestic violence.

"We wish to turn our personal tragedy into a positive," The Gabby Petito Foundation's website reads. "It is our hope that Gabby’s foundation will bring these important issues into the forefront of the public eye to the benefit of all our communities."

Petito's mother, Nicole Schmidt, spoke with local Tampa news station WFLA about the charitable endeavor.

"We're still grieving and it's going to be a process for a long time," she said. "I think starting the foundation is a way of us grieving and getting through this. Some mornings I wake up, I want to save the world and I know I can't do that but I'll die trying. And that's Gabby's legacy."

Schmidt's personal goal is to help prevent Petito's situation from ever happening to someone else. She noted that there are currently only Amber Alerts for missing children and Silver Alerts for "at-risk seniors," so she hopes for a new nationwide alert system to address missing persons between the ages of 18 and 64.

"What about these people that are in between?" Schmidt questioned. "If a family member knows they're missing, there's got to be some kind of alert system so people start looking immediately."

Petito's younger brother, TJ Schmidt, created a new TikTok account to address the thousands of people that are interested in his sister's life and seeking justice for her.

The Gabby Petito Foundation has already set up two college scholarships that will benefit students from the two high schools in her hometown. The website also features numerous resources for domestic violence and is selling bracelets to benefit the foundation.