Do You Ever Pay Attention to Missing Person Posters?

Do you ever really pay attention to the faces of missing people that line store entrances, post offices or grocery stores? Do you even know how many people are considered missing? According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation National Crime Information Center, as of December 2005, there were over 100,000 active missing person cases listed with the agency. Of those, almost half were missing adults.

In 2000, Kristen’s Law, which was passed by the 106th Congress and signed by President Clinton, established the National Center for Missing Adults (NCMA). The agency, a division of the Nation’s Missing Children Organization, Inc., offers support to families while servings as an information clearinghouse and training resource for national law enforcement agencies. Headquartered in Arizona, NCMA focuses primarily on missing adults thought to be at risk due to physical disability, diminished mental capacity or who disappeared under suspicious circumstance. Kristen’s Law, was named after Kristen Modaferri who disappeared in 1997 two weeks after her eighteenth birthday.

The brief biographies associated with each missing person story are both frightening and heart wrenching. Like the story of Matthew Admiral Golden of Denton, Texas, who clocked into work at 8:57 a.m., but had vanished by 9:00 a.m. the same day. On October 16, 2003, Matthew’s skull was found by municipal workers. No cause of death has ever been determined. There’s also the biography of 26 year old Risha Aleena Lewis who disappeared earlier this year after visiting a friend in Elkton, Maryland. Her vehicle, a white four door Crown Victoria is also missing. Recently, NCMA started posting extended biographies of the missing, written by their friends and family members. These biographies are aimed at showing that there was a special life behind each face displayed on NCMA’s site.

In 2005, NCMA was asked to coordinate efforts to locate over 13,000 cases of lost persons after the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe in 2005. Those efforts have depleted the organizations funds and threaten to force NCMA to close its doors. As of July 14, 2006, the Department of Justice responded to NCMA’s pleas for assistance with a grant of $50,000, hardly enough to keep the organization afloat.

The NCMA needs your help. Contact your state representatives and insist they support the efforts of the National Center for Missing Adults. You can also help by making a personal donation and sharing this information with everyone you know. Visit NCMA at http://www.theyaremissed.org/ncma.