What is Laura's Law?
(KTXL)  Thursday was the deadline for California counties to choose whether to opt-in to a 19-year-old law meant to save lives and get those with mental challenges the help they need. Nearly 2 million Californians experience the kind of mental illness that substantially interferes with normal life activities. Investigators found that one of those struggling with schizophrenia in Placer County back in 2002 killed Laura Wilcox and three other people at Nevada Countys public mental health clinic. Following her death, Wilcoxs parents led the charge to pass a law allowing those in a current state of mental decline to be ordered into outpatient treatment by a court if a county implements the law. To qualify, someone must have been hospitalized or incarcerated several times in the last three years or have made threats or acts of violence within the last four years. And after Laura was killed, I realized that someone elses mental health problem became my familys problem, and how someone else, a persons mental health problem became our communitys problem, said Wilcoxs mother, Amanda. FOX40 reached out to the State Department of Health Care Services to provide the latest list of counties that have implemented Lauras Law. A recent accounting indicated only about 20 of Californias 58 counties have done so. Supervisors in Sacramento County just made that move in May. Some areas have also filed extensions.