Focus on Immigration Life-Immigration Perspectives on the U.S.: Three Children Who Changed American History—The U.S. Missing Child Intervention System
On May 25, 1979, 6-year-old Etan Patz prepared to go out alone for the first time. The little boy from New York was full of confidence, telling his parents he would walk two blocks by himself to catch the school bus. After receiving permission, Etan set off with his backpack and a hat printed with "Future Airline Captain." Yet, this was the last time his parents would ever see him; Etan went missing on that short walk to school.
Countless reporters and police officers swarmed the distraught parents, watching them spell out "Etan... ay-tahn" over and over again like a broken record. Subsequently, extensive media coverage gripped the nation's nerves. The photo of a grinning Etan, taken by his photographer father, was featured on missing person posters across the city, printed on the sides of milk cartons to enter thousands of households, and even displayed on billboards in New York's Times Square.
But Etan never returned. For an entire generation of Americans, that childish smile under a baseball cap was heartbreaking. People realized that behind Etan's disappearance lay a reflection of the weak connection between schools and parents, as well as the inefficiency and incompetence of the police, who, depending on the jurisdiction, would sometimes wait 24 to 72 hours after a child went missing before taking action.
Although the Founding Fathers did not build a foolproof system for American society, they left behind a more valuable model of self-renewal that can be summarized as "Crisis-Reflection-Progress." In 1983, President Reagan declared May 25, the day Etan went missing, as "National Missing Children's Day." American society began to truly value the issue of missing children and launched the nearly 10-year-long "Milk Carton Missing Person Campaign." As the most famous missing child in the U.S., Etan's tragic experience changed America forever, directly influencing a series of subsequent laws and institutional updates that have saved countless American children.
Time moved to July 27, 1981, a sweltering afternoon in Florida. 6-year-old Adam Walsh followed his mother's instructions to watch other children play video games at a department store. But seven minutes later, when Adam's mother arrived to pick him up, the space in front of the game console was empty.
The anxious parents printed 150,000 missing person flyers and posted them all over the city's streets. But the tragic news struck the family: two weeks later, fishermen recovered Adam's head from an irrigation canal 120 miles away. Consequently, the grief-stricken parents told the media how unreliable the police had been: on the afternoon Adam went missing, his mother had reported it to the police, but not only did they fail to respond in a timely manner, they even told the media that "disappearance and kidnapping are likely unrelated." When Adam's father went to the police station the next day to ask for progress, the police asked him: "Do you have any suggestions?"
Although the killer who murdered Adam turned himself in two years later, the Walshes decided to embark on a path of advocating for child safety. At a Congressional hearing for the "Missing Children's Act," Adam's father, who was not well-versed in law or politics, moved everyone with one sentence: "A country that can launch a space shuttle and bring it back to Earth does not have an information collection and service center for missing children?"
Subsequently, the "Missing Children's Assistance Act" was passed with the participation of the Walshes. The act called for the establishment of a toll-free hotline for missing children nationwide, as well as a national information clearinghouse and identification center for missing children. That same year, the Walshes founded the non-profit organization "National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC)," opening the key door to solving the problem of missing children.
In the late 1980s, Walmart stores implemented a child safety alert system and named it "Code Adam" in memory of Adam. If parents discover their child is missing in the store, they can immediately seek help from this system; all store exits are locked, staff immediately begin a search, and if the child is not found within 10 minutes, the police are immediately brought in. Since then, this system has been adopted by numerous public facilities across the U.S., including supermarkets, shopping malls, hospitals, and museums.
However, the tragedies continued. On January 13, 1996, 9-year-old Amber Hagerman was kidnapped while riding her bike. Her screams drew the attention of a neighbor, but this kidnapping, which occurred in broad daylight, still led to the most tragic outcome: her body was found four days later.
Local residents demanded that local radio stations broadcast news about missing children continuously, with the same frequency and intensity as weather reports. Six months later, at a press conference, someone recalled how the media had been a huge help during the search for Amber. This information finally reached the ears of the police, and after a series of upgrades, a massive system was launched that connected to the U.S. Emergency Alert System, broadcasting information about missing children nationwide through radio, television, email, traffic alerts, text messages, Facebook, Google, and other channels. The content released by this system, named "Amber," is determined by the police and typically includes the characteristics of the missing child, the suspect, and the suspect's vehicle description and license plate number.
If "Code Adam" solved the problem of children going missing in public places, the "Amber System" completely immersed the search for missing children and suspects into the ocean of the public. Since 1996, this system has successfully recovered or rescued 602 missing children. Taking 2011 as an example, among the cases where missing children were successfully recovered through the Amber system, 50% were due to the public or police discovering the suspect's vehicle through an Amber alert; 39% were due to the public providing key information such as sightings after receiving the alert; and in 11% of cases, the suspects released the kidnapped children after receiving the alert.
Three unfortunate missing children completely changed the trajectory of how the United States addresses the issue of missing children. The depth of this impact can be seen in a set of figures: in 1990, only 62% of missing children in the U.S. could be found, but today, that figure has reached 97.7%.
As John Walsh, Adam's father, who later became the host of Fox's "America's Most Wanted" (a program that helped police recover 65 missing or kidnapped children), said: "Remember, your participation can change everything!"