29 Jul “More Eyes Looking Means More Children Found”
July 2015 Blog Post by BairFind Director Ellen Sullivan
Dennis Bair, a former minor league pitcher with the Chicago Cubs founded The BairFind Foundation for the purposes of finding missing children. Dennis recognized a growing societal problem in that every year thousands of children go missing. While many of these children are found a short while later due to the selfless efforts of law enforcement agencies and other organizations, there are thousands of children that remain missing. Their profiles fade from the news and flyers, the leads quickly dry up. Families and loved ones do their best to keep profiles out in view of the public because when the public stops looking, the chances of recovering a missing child decreases substantially.
Dennis established the Foundation with the belief that missing children should never be forgotten or fade from public awareness. The successes of the Foundation demonstrate that keeping profiles out in view of the public can help bring missing children home.
The BairFind Foundation works in collaboration with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. (NCMEC) The pictures of the missing children that are profiled on BairFind materials contain the NCMEC logo and the 1-800-THE-LOST® (1-800-843-5678) number indicating the profiles are certified and demonstrate the partnership of the organizations.
Depending on the length of time that a child has been missing, an age progression enhancement image may be included. An increasing sophistication in software to produce age-progressed images is promising in the search for missing children.
Keeping the public informed and engaged in the search for missing children dramatically increases the likelihood of a child being found and returned home. The BairFind Foundation’s vision is based on the simple and proven formula that “more eyes looking means more children found and returned home”.