It’s all about “thank you” and all the thanks we need is in the lives we save.
Have you noticed that people have lost many of the social skills that the 40-somethings and older learned from their parents? In a world of social media, e-mail and other digital communications, people have lost the face-to-face etiquette touch. We don’t write thank-you notes, birthday cards or Christmas cards anymore. We just pass by those who hold the door open for us without a second thought. It’s an oddity to find front-porch gatherings anymore. In some cases, we even text people from across the room!
Of course, there are exceptions. The exceptions that bind are, sadly, crises and disasters. As a nation, we came together after 9/11. We came to the rescue of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. And, a missing person makes the nightly news, Amber alerts and gets us together in search parties.
Most of the time it’s in the latter cases that people take notice of the services provided by A Child is Missing. That’s okay, though. In a perfect world, our services wouldn’t be needed at all. In our flawed world, we hope our services are only needed sporadically but, unfortunately, we stay plenty busy finding lost kids and the elderly, plus issuing other varieties of community alerts. (See previous posts for more information.)
Here’s a little bit of what we’ve been up to since January 1, 2001. We have placed almost 64 million calls (yes, millions!). Of those, almost 40 million have been related to cases involving children and almost 13 million have been related to elderly alerts. ACIM has been involved in more than 40,000 cases leading to the millions of calls. How many individuals have been connected to these cases and calls? If you guessed almost 41,000 people, you would have been right!
Law enforcement agencies across the nation have credited ACIM with more than 1,417 successful save assisted recoveries. It’s estimated that A Child is Missing has also assisted in a significant number of unreported recoveries.
Again, our satisfaction comes knowing that we’ve reunited more than 1,400 families.
But our satisfaction isn’t just in the findings. We’re also proud to have trained more than 35,000 law enforcement officers in 8,000 agencies nationwide to be better equipped to find missing people. The old saying is: “The best offense is a good defense.” We contend, though, that our skilled defenders put criminals on the defensive. Until the criminals go away, we’ll continue to train.
We would not be as successful as we are, though, without caring communities and relentless law enforcement agencies. While we send out millions of notices through phone calls, faxes and e-mails, it’s the people on the scene in the affected communities that put their boots on the ground.
So, without further ado, “thank you” to all of you who have helped us the past 13 years. Even though we didn’t send you a thank-you note, please know that we appreciate all
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