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Take Action
According to Monica Caison and a variety of law enforcement
and private organizations in the field, there are
a number of steps that need to be taken when you
believe that a member of your family is missing — first
and foremost being to understand the term itself. “Late for dinner” does
not always mean a person is missing, nor does the fact that someone
failed to show up for work or an appointment. More often than not,
these sorts of circumstances will resolve on their own. When, for whatever
reason, they do not, it is important, both in the short and long-term
scheme of things, to take action.
Step 1: Pencil and
paper
Under most circumstances, people
will generally run through
a list of common activities to
determine the whereabouts of
someone they believe is missing.
They’ll call other family members,
friends, acquaintances and
colleagues at work. Once these
steps have been exhausted and
a variable length of time has
passed (dependent on a variety
of circumstances), people will
generally turn to law enforcement
officials (see Step 2). Before
that happens, though, it is a good
idea to begin immediately documenting
what you know. Grab
a pencil and a pad of paper and
start writing things down. When
was the person last seen? Who
saw him/her at that time? Where
was the person going when last
seen? What was the person wearing?
Answers to these and other
questions will add to the arsenal
of tools you can bring to
bear when you reach out to law
enforcement for assistance.
“Keep accurate notes on what
you learn,” says Caison, adding
that it’s a good idea to have
someone with you to aid in your
recall of information, “and be as
detailed as possible.”
Step 2: Call 911
Protocol for assistance by an
organization like the CUE Center
for Missing Persons (and others)
begins with a police report. “Part
of the (CUE Center’s) registration
process is having a copy of
that report,” says Caison. Prepare
for the subsequent investigation
by offering investigators recent
photographs (“at least three,”
says Caison, “and be prepared
not to get them back”). Also, provide
any available information on
existing medical issues — medications,
handicaps, allergies or
any known health limitations.
Step 3: Call everybody
else
The search for a missing loved one
does not begin or end with a 911
call, nor does it necessarily stop
when you inform an organization
like the CUE Center (910-343-1131
or 910-232-1687). Call, for example,
the North Carolina Center for
Missing Persons at 1-800-522-KIDS
(522-5437), which is staffed 24
hours a day. The National Center
for Missing and Exploited Children
has a phone number, as well: 1-
800-THE-LOST. While the primary
purpose of such calls is to provide
as many organizations as possible
with as much information about
your missing person as you can,
it is important, too, that you, as a
victim yourself. . .
Step 4: Stay active
“They need to be pro-active,”
says Caison of the families of
missing persons. “They need to
reach out.” Caison tries, at every
available opportunity, to leave
something behind when she visits
the family of a missing person.
She gives them “homework. . .
a goal, which empowers them,”
and keeps them focused on the
task at hand. “I always leave (families)
with a new goal.”
and practical resources available to the families of missing persons,
and, as its informational flyer indicates, lets these families
know that “Hope Lights the Way.”
The event will conclude, on Saturday night, March 27,
with a public-invited, candlelight ceremony at Riverfront
Park, emceed by WECT’s Frances Weller. Guest speaker
Susan Murphy Milano, with the Institute for Relational Harm
Reduction and Public Pathology Education will speak to the
assembled on the subject of “Moving Forward.” Members of
victims’ families will be on hand for the unveiling of the memorial
wall of victims, begun in the early days of the CUE Center,
and still a centerpiece of the organization’s annual, educational,
nationwide Road Tours, spotlighting these missing persons,
keeping their names and the plight of their families alive.
At one of the CUE Center’s conferences, Caison calculated that
the number of people who go missing in this country — every
day — is the equivalent of four airplanes full of passengers: about
1,000 per day, or more
than 300,000 every year.
Statistics from the FBIoperated
National Crime
Information Center
(2007) place that figure
in the range of 600,000
or more, though many
of the reported cases in
those files include people
The number of people
who go missing in this
country — every day
— is the equivalent of
four airplanes full
of passengers.
who are subsequently found quickly. Either way — four or eight
airplanes per day — it’s a huge number.
“Our world is becoming an open graveyard for missing people,”
Caison says, “because nobody’s paying attention. You can
bet that if people heard on the news that four airplanes were
crashing every day in this country, somebody would be doing
something.”
“We’re like invisible organizations,” says Joan Petruski, founder
and director of the Kristen Foundation, a Charlotte, North
Carolina-based missing persons advocacy organization that was
named for Kristen Modafferi, a resident of Charlotte who disappeared
www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM
in 1997.
The Kristen Foundation, in addition to doing similar work in
the family advocacy arena, financially supports the CUE Center
and its annual conference. Petruski believes the organizations
that do this kind of work are invisible because no one imagines
a person as missing until that person actually goes missing.
“People don’t want to envision their loved one disappearing,”
Petruski says. “You hear it all the time from victims’ families; ‘I
never thought. . .’ It’s just not dinner conversation. It’s a disease
for which there is no cure. But it can happen. It happens every
day.”
And every day, families have to deal with the consequences,
isolated in that whirlpool of fear, panic and helplessness that
Monica Caison’s CUE Center for Missing Persons was founded
to address. Thanks to Caison, who draws no salary for her
work, these legions of the missing and their families will not be
forgotten.
Not in her lifetime.