A virtual Amber Alert

The Garden for the Missing

By Surfdaddy Orca

It’s every parent’s worst nightmare. A mother calls the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) to report her 15-year-old daughter missing from Missouri. The mother informs NCMEC that the juvenile may be using an alias and may also be in need of immediate medical attention.

Unfortunately, this scenario and others like it are all too common. The U.S. Department of Justice reports as of 2007:

• 797,500 children (younger than 18) were reported missing in a one-year period of time studied resulting in an average of 2,185 children being reported missing each day.
• 203,900 children were the victims of family abductions.
• 58,200 children were the victims of non-family abductions.
• 115 children were the victims of “stereotypical” kidnapping.

Stereotypical crimes involve “someone the child does not know or someone of slight acquaintance, who holds the child overnight, transports the child 50 miles or more, kills the child, demands ransom, or intends to keep the child permanently.”

Avatar Ronnie Rhode is doing her best to make sure the word gets out on missing children inside Second Life (SL). Her “Garden for the Missing” is a tranquil, but sobering space with images of over 135 missing persons.

“I have been aware of missing persons cases for some time and with the excellent presentation tools in SL, it seemed a perfect match of need and resources,” says Ronnie. “And the reason I care is that the families are so devastated not having answers as to what happened to their loved ones.” Ronnie maintains her own personal national U.S. database in conjunction with Project Jason and tracks cases through NCMEC.Project Jason’s mission statement as a non-profit organization is “to create and increase public awareness of missing people through a variety of outreach and educational activities.” Ronnie says she plans to provide a SLurl from Project Jason’s web site to her virtual garden.

Common approaches abductors use (from needykids.com) include:

• “Can you help me find my puppy?”
• “Would you like a kitten?”
• “Please take my mail and put it in the mail box” says an abductor from inside his/her vehicle. The child gives up their safe distance.”
• “Do you know where such and such street is?”
• “Would you like some candy?”
• “Your father’s been hurt and your mother wants me to bring you home.”

Of course, missing children cases are not just confined to the U.S. A recent Reuters report from Brussels says that Portugal “will push in early October for the creation of an EU-wide alert system for missing children, five months after four-year-old Madeleine McCann went missing in a holiday resort in the south of the country.”

And the innovative use of SL isn’t the only technology being explored to increase the recovery rate for the missing. On September 25th, 2007 egrips® Technology (www.egrips.com) announced a partnership with the sponsors of the Wireless AMBER Alerts public service advertising (PSA) campaign.

According to the NCMEC press release, the program is designed “to engage and inspire the advertising industry and the general public in and around New York City, to sign up for Wireless AMBER Alerts in an effort to help save abducted children.” egrips Technology donated 100,000 wireless device strips to get messages out. These wireless device strips prevent sliding on dry surfaces, such as car seats, center consoles, dashboards and counter tops.

Since 1997, the AMBER Alert program has been credited with the safe recovery of 346 children. To date there is a network of 121 AMBER Plans across the country.

And what about the girl from Missouri? Nearly nine months after her mother reported her missing, NCMEC’s Call Center received a call regarding the location of the girl’s whereabouts in Maine. According to NCMEC, the caller “indicated that a friend of the girl’s saw her picture on www.missingkids.com and recognized her.” With the information provided by NCMEC, law enforcement was able to locate and recover the missing girl on May 2, 2007.

This is the good news in an otherwise heartbreaking scenario. Since 1984, NCMEC has assisted law-enforcement with more than 133,000 missing-child cases, resulting in the recovery of more than 115,700 children.

NCMEC’s hotline (1-800-THE-LOST®) handles an average of 283 service-related calls per day. Since its 1984 inception, the toll-free Hotline has handled more than 2.2 million calls.

As Ronnie Rhode says, “You just know [your] heart leaps every time the phone rings.”

Visit Ronnie’s garden at Garden for the Missing, Remora (212, 173, 21)

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