Saturday, May 25, 2013

Amber Alert

Today is National Missing Children’s Day.  I learned some things that I want to pass on to every single person in the world.  Since here I have a venue I’m saying it. 

Y’all know that I volunteer for Trauma Intervention Programs, (TIP).  I spent last Thursday being horrified and, interestingly, getting traumatized in my TIP capacity.  TIP has liasoned with YCART, which means Yavapai Child Abduction Response Team.  This is the Amber Alert program, which mobilizes whenever a child goes missing.  This training day was aimed at all of us First Responders.  It consisted of horrible statistics and stories.

That’s where this piece comes in, with the one thing (No – 2, well, actually, 3 things) that I want everyone to know to do.  Please forward this to everybody.  I and they will appreciate it, and you might save a kid’s life by doing so.

Here’s a scenario:
I have a 3-year-old granddaughter that I often baby-sit.  If I ask and explain and bribe her nicely, she is capable of entertaining herself for 15 or 20 minutes while I get some work done. 

So let’s say that one day we’ve come to an agreement and I’m happily banging away on the computer while she plays with whatever I’ve bribed her with.  

Suddenly I realize that the room is suspiciously quiet.  I look around and don’t see her.

I call her name.  No answer.  I yell her name, using The Serious Voice.  No answer.  Now I know there’s a problem because all of the children are hard-wired to know that The Voice means no foolin’.

I run around the house, looking around corners and under beds and in the covers.  No luck.  I am now terrified.  She just turned 3, I’m responsible for her, and I don’t know where she is.

This calling and yelling and the cursory run-through the house has taken about 2 minutes. 

The next second is critical.  The next choice that I make may mean the difference between a joyful reunion and a tragedy. 

Statistically, people in this situation make another very thorough search of the house and then go outside and look around the yard for a while and then run up and down the street and then search the house again and then go next door and roust the neighbors to help.  This is a mistake, and it’s the mistake that I don’t want anybody to make ever again.

During that first 2 minutes, the second that I realize that I honestly do not know where my granddaughter is, that is the moment that I will call 911.  This is now a deadly serious situation, and time is not on my side.  I have one chance, right here, to do the smart thing.  I will call 911 and I will do it now.  I can never go back and do this second over again and I swear I will handle it correctly.

The heartbreaking statistic is that 60% of caregivers waste over 2 hours looking on their own before they make the 911 call.  The even bigger heartbreaker is that 76% of children that are murdered are killed within 3 hours of their disappearance.  Every minute that a child is gone, their chances for survival go down.  Need I say more?

The Amber Alert system nationwide is incredible, and our local CART has not only gotten on the bandwagon, they’ve created a lot of it.  Within 5 minutes of me making the 911 call I will have a team of highly trained and organized professionals systematically looking for my granddaughter.  (Actually, since I live in Jerome, it will be more like 30 seconds from me making the call, since no place is more than 30 seconds away by lit up police car.)  This is way better than just me, or just me and then the neighbors, yes?

I asked “How many people will show up?”  “Within 5 minutes, 5.  Within 20 minutes, 30.  Within 3 hours, 140.”  Whoa!  
Guess who is looking for my granddaughter?  The CART team consists of local cops and firemen, Yavapai & Coconino & Maricopa Sheriffs, The Marshalls, FBI, Homeland Security, National Guard, Air Force Reserves, Birds with FLIR (helicopters with infrared sensors), PJs (Trauma surgeons), Search & Rescue, Probation & Parole personnel, and anybody else with credentials that shows up, and they do show up.

When they said “5 minutes” during the training I snorted.  I raised my hand and said “Um, response time in the Verde Valley averages 10 to 15 minutes.”  They said “Not for a missing kid.  Even if we were in the middle of investigating a murder, if we heard the Amber tone we would drop everything and run.  Amber Alerts are absolute highest priority, bar none.  On duty, off duty, full-time people, part-time people, trainees, it doesn’t matter.  If an Amber tone goes out everybody scrambles.  If at all humanly possible we will have people on scene within 5 minutes.  No exceptions, no excuses.” 

Within minutes of my call, helicopters will be in the sky, dogs will be on the way, roadblocks will be up, and sex offenders will have officials knocking on their doors.  They will find her.

Again I raise my hand.  “Wow!  That is truly impressive.  But, I’m thinking of my son.  He used to like to get his blankie and curl up in the clothes dryer.  (Yes, I admit it.  He was a different sort of child.)  What if you mobilize this awesome Amber Alert machine and then the kid is found asleep in the dryer?” 

The Lieutenant answered “That would totally make everybody’s day.  We love to get cancelled because the kid was found safe.”

I said “That would be really embarrassing, calling you and then nothing was wrong.”

He said, “I would rather have you feel embarrassed than have you at a funeral, or looking at a loved one’s picture on a milk carton.”  Oh.  Yeah. 

The truly horrifying story was of the small child who went out the doggie door, toddled a good half a mile to an irrigation ditch, and drowned.  This kid was mostly still crawling.  In the time that it took him to get to that irrigation ditch, if CART had been called they would have found him long before he got there.  That’s the horrifying story, and I pray for such a thing to never happen again.

Please pass the word.  If everybody’s worst nightmare happens don’t be embarrassed.  Make the 911 call immediately and get your kid found safe.  When you call, don’t hem and haw.  Say “Three year old girl, GONE!” and give the address so that dispatch can get the team scrambling.  Then you can tell the story, and say “There’s probably nothing wrong and I’m sure she’ll show up any second now……...” and then go open the door for the cops because they will be there that quickly, ecstatic that you didn’t waste time.

The second thing?  Educate the children.  There were 2 sound bites on this subject that hit me right between the eyes:

“If people don’t know what to do they will do what they’re told to do.”  If the person doing the telling is a predator, that’s a horrific statement.  Children HAVE to know what to do.  They have to know not to listen to threats, and they have to know that if they don’t know somebody they don’t go with them even if the guy is wearing a police uniform.  They have to know that they don’t go with somebody that they do know unless that person knows the code word that’s been previously agreed upon.  No way!  Better safe than sorry.

“Kids who scream, kick, scream, fight, bite, run, and scream some more don’t get abducted.”    Really?  Really.  Predators don’t want a ruckus, and they will drop your kid and go find one that’s compliant.  Have a drill.  Practice screaming.  Seriously – have a drill.  The kids will know what to do if they practice it.

I know.  It broke my heart to be having “practice screaming sessions” with my grandchildren, and explaining to them why.  I’ll tell you what, though – this only broke my heart a little bit.  A kid snatched would kill me. 

The third thing:  If you see something that (In the words of these cops that I spent my day with) looks “skeevy,” make noise.  They showed us a video of a 7 year old girl who was participating in a cop experiment.  She walked down a busy big city sidewalk, an actor grabbed her, and she started screaming “Stranger!  Stranger!  Help!”  4 out 5 adults on the sidewalk did absolutely nothing – they just kept walking.  In interviews with these people later, they said either “I didn’t want to get involved” (and there is a special place in Hell for those people) or “I didn’t know what to do.”  OK, I’ll tell you what to do.  Start yelling.  Tackle the guy.  Call 911.  Take a picture of the guy with your phone while you yell.  Do SOMETHING, do ANYTHING to help a kid that’s in trouble.  (I do believe that here in our small communities, out here in The Wild West, the ratio would be reversed – I think that 4 out of 5 people would intervene, and please leave my rose-colored glasses alone.)

I don’t want to alarm you…….. well, actually, yes I do.  I do want to alarm you.  There are 1.3 MILLION missing children reported every year in this country.  Most do make it home safely.  Of those 1.3 million, only 100 are confirmed stranger abductions, plus another 350 or so that are suspected.  It’s incredibly rare, but when it does happen it is the most horrible thing that you can imagine. 

I said “Aw, c’mon!  This doesn’t happen around here!”  They said that just about once a year we have an attempted abduction in Yavapai County.  Dear God.  I did not want to know that.  Hear that sound?  That’s my rose-colored glasses breaking.

Thank you for listening.