By NC WANTED Staff

Posted: Nov 12, 2008
Updated: Mar 19, 2009

ALL COUNTIES — Children disappear all the time. Some wander off; some are taken to be used as pawns in familial disputes. Some are abducted by predators. Ninety-six percent of the time, the child is found within 24 hours.

But in rare cases, the trail goes cold and years go by, leaving families with a gaping loss and countless questions about what happened.

J. Melinda Collins is the deputy director for the missing childrens division of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and she seeks to answer those questions as she, families and law enforcement search for the lost. The center, which partners with law enforcement to publicize information about missing children, was formed in 1984 under a federal mandate.

In December, NC WANTED profiled four cases, each different but linked by common threads – the desperation of those left behind who struggle with the great unknown, and the hope that sustains them.

“There is one universal thing – the families are just absolutely almost paralyzed with fear, grief, a feeling of helplessness. Their life stops at that moment,” Collins said. “The mission of law enforcement, the mission of the national center is to try to get that child home and make that grief stop. Put that family back together. The safe recovery of a child makes that all go away. That’s what we do. I mean, that’s why we do.”

Cases run the gamut from toddlers to teens, and contrary to popular opinion, the teenagers tend to be the more challenging cases.

“Children that go missing are usually lost and they look lost. They’re trying to be found. Runaways and teenagers that leave usually are not trying to be found. So it makes it harder, much harder,” she said. “By very nature of the name I just used, they’re runaways, which seems to denote that they left by choice, which, to some extent, they did. But they’re children. And they are incredible- they are in incredible danger.”

Even when a child has been killed, Collins said, to a certain extent it provides a family relief and closure to know where the child is at, even in death. The search finally can stop.

Some searches span decades, and Collins said she has witnessed the recovery of children missing for more than 20 years.

To keep old cases in the spotlight, the center has a unit specializing in age-progression technology

“When we disseminate posters to the public, they have what we believe is a very true rendition of what that child looks like at their current age,” she said, noting the center also does reconstructions of what someone may have looked like based on unidentified skeletal remains.

No case is closed until a child is found. The search for answers can be long and frustrating, but Collins insists it is somehow uplifting.

“We’re in the hope business. We’re in the hard work business,” she said. “You gain your energy from your success. We have a 96 percent recovery rate. When you find one, it makes you want to find another. We deal in positives.”