WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — National Missing Children’s Day encourages people to make child safety a priority and that’s also the mission of a nonprofit located in Wilmington.
According to the FBI, more than 450,000 children are reported missing in the U.S.
That’s more than 75 percent of all the people who are reported missing every year.
Monica Caison, founder of the Community United Effort (CUE) Center for Missing Persons, explained the significance of that number.
“In just the few minutes that I take to talk to you, you know, there’s 2 or 3, maybe even 4 families somewhere reporting their child or their husband or their grandfather or somebody missing,” Caison said.
In the Cape Fear, hundreds of children have gone missing, including Mary Rachel Bryan from Carolina Beach, who is still listed as missing since 1941.
Caison said National Missing Children’s Day, which was observed on May 25th, is a reminder to continue our efforts to reunite missing children with their families.
“It gives the families notice, it gives them a story, it gives them time to talk about their loved one when people are paying attention.”
While CUE helps search for missing children, Caison said the organization never forgets about missing adults as well.
As Caison puts it, “everybody is the child of someone, so everybody is a missing child, whether they are 4, 14, or 40.”
The first National Missing Children’s Day was held in 1983.
May 25th was chosen to honor Etan Patz, a boy who had gone missing in New York City several years earlier.
