CODE ADAM

Nov 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By CORRINA STELLITANO

In 1981, Revé and John Walsh's 6-year-old son Adam was abducted from a Florida department store and later killed. The tragic story is familiar to most Americans because of the Walshes' work in establishing the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and John Walsh's role as host of T.V.'s “America's Most Wanted.”

The details of the story reveal a second horror, however; according to Walsh's book, Tears of Rage, his wife spent more than two terrified hours looking for Adam in and around the store before store employees called the police or joined in the hunt. Her pleas for help were met with casual replies as the hands of cashiers busily scanned purchases: “Oh, well, he probably just wandered off,” or “I'll bet he went looking for you.”

Today, the Code Adam program, named in honor of Adam Walsh and administered by NCMEC, is dedicated to finding children lost or abducted in public areas. Its procedures train employees of various venues to systematically look for lost children in the crucial minutes following a suspected loss or abduction.

A built-in search tool

Now in use in more than 45,000 locations from retail stores to hospitals, libraries to parks, the Code Adam program was the brainchild of a Wal-Mart employee in the mid-1990s. Bill Burns (now a Wal-Mart regional compliance manager) and other members of the safety team for a Wal-Mart store in Crawfordsville, Ind., devised the program following a well-publicized abduction in nearby Indianapolis.

“We thought, ‘We need to do something to protect one of our biggest assets as a company, which is our customers and their children,’” Burns says. Wal-Mart's efforts to protect children include Missing Children bulletin boards, introduced a decade ago at a Wal-Mart store in Vestal, N.Y. Implemented by Chuck McDowell, a Wal-Mart employee, the bulletin boards have helped locate 114 children to date.

The Code Adam program mobilizes large numbers of store employees almost instantaneously. In a 200,000-square-foot Wal-Mart store, as many as 125 staff members immediately begin canvassing pre-determined store areas and monitoring store doors in the event of a missing child.

“It's a very simplistic program but it's very powerful,” Burns says. “That's one of the great things about the program: a retailer can adopt it very quickly and be able to train its associates, so that if an attempted abduction happens they could react immediately.”

When a child is reported missing in any of the Code Adam-protected stores, the store employee first obtains a detailed description of the child, including such information as name, age, gender and race; weight, height, hair and eye color; and color and type of clothing including shoe color and style. The employee then goes to the nearest in-house telephone and broadcasts a Code Adam page, describing the child's physical features and clothing.

Other employees jump into action, searching pre-designated areas. If the child is not found within 10 minutes, law enforcement officers are notified. Store employees continue monitoring entrances and exits and are told to delay the departure of the child with anyone other than a parent or legal guardian, though they are urged to involve law enforcement before engaging in interventions that might endanger them, the staff, or visitors.

Tapping a human resource

Though some store chains may use CCTV cameras or other technological aids in the search, Code Adam is primarily a program based on human skills. “We feel like the human eye is one of the best resources we have,” Burns says. “Parents are great about being able to give a detailed description, and many times, the (child) will be found within minutes after the page.”

The Code Adam program is taught in the 3,600 U.S. Wal-Mart stores, Sam's Clubs and distribution centers; but, in the last decade, the Code Adam program has moved beyond Wal-Mart and is being adopted in a variety of public spaces.

Personnel at NCMEC continually seek partnerships with professional organizations such as the National Retail Federation, the Food Marketing Institute, and regional office and business building associations, providing them with the resources to introduce Code Adam to their members.

In addition, the PROTECT Act (or Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to end the Exploitation of Children Today Act of 2003) requires the General Services Administration's Public Buildings Service to implement the Code Adam program in all owned and leased federal buildings nationwide. New program participants receive a training video and brochures, and Code Adam decals to post in the front windows.

The home décor retailer Bed, Bath & Beyond adopted the Code Adam program in August. After distributing support materials in mid-July, the company spent 3-4 weeks training its store level employees to ensure “flawless execution” of the Code Adam program.

Each employee has a specific role, explains Jim O'Connor, director of loss prevention and safety for the 600-store chain. The front-end manager monitors the entrance and exit; the store manager initiates the page and gets the store associates immediately involved in the search for the missing child. The manager-on-duty checks the restrooms, stairwells and perimeter stockrooms; the receiving manager searches the shipping and receiving area; and associates search their respective departments while closely monitoring the emergency exits.

A training video supplied by NCMEC is shown to all associates at store level “huddle” meetings, and the area loss prevention managers conduct follow-up assessments of each store's preparedness.

“I can't imagine any retailer not implementing Code Adam. It just makes so much sense,” O'Connor says. “While associates begin looking for the child, the cashiers continue servicing our customers. It's not that difficult.”

Before the Code Adam system was in place, a search for a missing child would have been “unstructured,” O'Connor says. “This takes it to the next level and gets the bulk of the associates involved immediately. We have had instances where a child has been found in literally 30 seconds as a result of the speed in which the associates begin the search.

For retail chains, the simple blue Code Adam decal can serve as a deterrent to potential abductors and as a marketing tool, says David Shapiro, special assistant to the president, NCMEC.

“When [customers] see that blue and white sticker as they go into the store, it gives them a sense of community. They know there is a program where employees are pre-trained to find their child.”

The Code Adam program isn't only for children; Shapiro recalls hearing Code Adam pages recently at a Nordstrom store for a missing Alzheimer's patient.

“This is positive security,” he says. “You have equipment to prevent shoplifting; this is a program which helps to protect your customers. It has practical safety and security value. It's a serious program but it's a very easy program to implement.”

Empowering partnerships

As special assistant to the president of NCMEC, Shapiro focuses on developing domestic and international corporate partnerships like those necessary to make Code Adam a success.

Security systems provider ADT Security Services is a partner to the Center, helping to introduce the Code Adam program to its customers through its 1,000 salespeople. In addition to distributing co-branded Code Adam promotional materials to its customers, ADT includes NCMEC in pertinent trade show events.

Because one out of six missing children is found as a direct result of someone recognizing a child in the NCMEC photo-distribution program and contacting authorities, corporate partnerships can also be a crucial way for a technology provider to lend its expertise to help find children.

For example, Eden Prairie, Minn.-based Lifetouch, one of the largest school photography companies in the nation, recently partnered with NCMEC to create SmileSafe Kids. Lifetouch produces two photo IDs for every child they photograph for the parents' and guardians' wallets.

In the first year of the program, 20 million children in 30,000 schools will receive the free ID cards.

The SmileSafe Kids program contains a rapid-response system that allows Lifetouch to provide a child's image to NCMEC, in the event of a missing child, if requested by the family, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Lifetouch will provide an image to NCMEC only if it is requested and verified by the child's parent or guardian. Already, a child in North Carolina was recovered through the partnership.

The StreetSentz partnership with RadioShack Corp. involves the distribution of a free photo ID packet in which the parents and guardians can enter vital information about their children. To date, more than 850,000 kits have been distributed. In addition, alerts about missing children are sent by fax to all RadioShack stores in the pertinent geographical zones. With 7,200 stores, “this is a powerful, powerful tool,” Shapiro says.

Other corporations, such as Canon or LexisNexis, donate equipment and resources to NCMEC and to police departments. Technological tools help in other ways. The IntelliCast Target Notification system by Longmont, Colo.-based Intrado enables a prerecorded message about a missing child alert to be sent to all phone numbers within a certain distance from an abduction site.

QUALCOMM's OmniTRACS mobile communications system enables the communication of a child's description by text messaging to shipping trucks. For example, Shapiro says, “Wal-Mart knows where all of its 5,000 trucks are at all times. We can communicate to these trucks in geographic locations with descriptions. The power of communications and technology to get information and graphic images out there makes a difference.” Prior to 1990, NCMEC'S recovery rate of missing children was 62 percent. Now, with the help of technological systems, the success rate has risen to 94 percent.

Governmental partnerships are not limited to the PROTECT Act. To complement the PROTECT Act, in January 2004, the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced an agreement with NCMEC as part of Operation Predator, an ongoing Homeland Security initiative to safeguard children from predatory criminals. Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Michael J. Garcia hailed the agreement as an important step in “making the world a far more difficult place for child predators.”

NCMEC agreed to furnish ICE with evidence and leads it receives on child pornography and suspected child sex violators through its national CyberTipline (1-800-843-5678 or cybertipline.com). In addition, ICE has agreed to provide NCMEC with access to identifying information contained in ICE's data systems.

For more information about the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, please visit their web site at www.missingkids.com or call 1-800-THE-LOST.

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© 2008 Penton Media Inc.

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