In 1979 when Etan Patz walked to his school bus stop in Manhattan, the six-year-old became the first child whose picture was nationally printed on the side of milk cartons as he never boarded the bus. And in 1984, the National Child Safety Council adopted and expanded the Missing Children Milk Carton Program and brought the faces of missing children right to your breakfast table.
How did all this start? Near Des Moines, Iowa two newspaper delivery boys went missing and a relative who worked at the local diary asked his employer to help. The diary complied and the photos replaced the usual advertisements on the side of the carton.
At the time there was no system for tracking missing kids across state lines. The program in its day distributed an estimated 5 million cartons. But the system had little success in finding the “Milk Carton Kids.”
One noted child found herself staring back at her from a carton of milk in the store. Her stepfather told her not to tell anyone but eventually, her neighbors saw the photo and called the police.
Although its lack of success in locating missing children then, the program did accomplish in bringing more awareness and launched the AMBER Alert system in 1996. Today, texts to your phones and highway signs alert everyone of a child being taken. Of the 183 AMBER alerts issued in 2015, 153 kids were returned to their rightful guardians.
Photo Toronto Star
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