AMBER Alerts Campaign Help Save a Child

Sign up today for wireless Amber Alerts and help law enforcement safely recover children   

A year ago I encouraged you to sign up for mobile AMBER Alerts. This cause is worth an annual reminder, and the launch of a new campaign provides the perfect occasion. The goal is to enlist millions more Americans in the race to rescue missing children. This program has already recovered more than 260 children since 1996. If you haven’t already signed up, please consider doing so now.

Did you ever wonder why many of the AMBER Alert fliers or notifications you receive show kids that went missing from entirely different parts of the country? It always seemed rather inefficient to me to send alerts about a child missing from say, New Hampshire, to people in the Seattle area. The result was I’d skip over those photos and instead focus on the images of children missing closer to home.

Come to find out, there is nothing inefficient about it at all.

The reason you get requests to help find children abducted in other parts of the country is because the agency has received information that indicates the child may now be living in your area. That piece of information completely changed the way I view the notifications I see about missing children.

Get local Amber Alerts via e-mail or through text messages to your cell phone. It takes just moments to register, but the benefits could last a child's lifetime.

• Sign up for email notifications, and follow the directions on your screen.
• Sign up for text messages to your phone or other wireless device, and follow the directions on your screen.