A 7-year-old autistic boy was reported missing in Springfield, Georgia, in April 2005. So who did the sheriff's office contact? A service that you most likely have never heard of but that is based in Fort Lauderdale and alerts thousands of people in minutes that a child is missing.
The name of this service? A Child Is Missing. In the case of the Georgia autistic child, A Child Is Missing placed 1,077 calls with a recording about the boy's disappearance to people and businesses in the area where the boy was last seen. Then, according to the service's website, "Approximately 300 people responded to the calls coming out of their
houses and assisting in the search, including one who looked into her
backyard pool and discovered him there." The boy was recovered unharmed. It was also used to help find a missing 3-year-old in New York, among hundreds of other cases.
A Child Is Missing, which, despite its name, encompasses missing people
of all ages, takes several factors into consideration when determining
an area in which to place calls. For example, children and elderly
people with dementia or Alzheimer's usually wander toward water,
according to the 14-year-old service's founder, Sherry Friedlander, who
says her nonprofit service is used by 5,000 out of 16,000 police
departments in the U.S. and uses computer programs help to deliver a recorded
message to 1,000 people per minute in an area selected on a satellite
map.
Friedlander has never had a missing child of her own but says the idea
came to her organically. "Nobody else was doing it in the country," she
says, "and they still aren't... We're just one spoke in the wheel to help
find missing [people]. We supply [law enforcement personnel] with the program
that helps them do their job." Friedlander notes that her service is
particularly useful now, at a time when tight budgets make for
understaffed police forces.
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