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| Child Identification Program slated for Saturday |
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| News | |||
| Written by Aaron Cedeño | |||
| Tuesday, 10 November 2009 08:00 | |||
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The statistics regarding missing children in the United States are not for the faint of heart. According to the Web site for the National Amber Alert Registry, one child goes missing every 40 seconds. That’s more than 800,000 children annually. Fortunately for residents of Miami County, a collaboration of residents is doing what it can to help stem that tide. From 1-3 p.m. on Saturday, at the Louisburg Police Department, the Louisburg Masonic Lodge will distribute free child identification kits, as part of the organization’s Kansas Child Identification Program. The event is being sponsored by Mary Flinn and Donna Lee, a pair of agents with the Reece & Nichols real estate office of Leawood, who also happen to be long-time Louisburg residents. Until recently, Reece & Nichols maintained an office in Louisburg, from which both Flinn and Lee were based. During their time in town, Flinn said, they frequently hosted community events; a trend they’ve continued since making the move to Leawood. Last month, for example, the office rented out Cedar Cove Feline Sanctuary and invited the town for a night of fun with the park’s feline inhabitants. “It was so much fun,” Flinn said. “But I think something like this is a little more important.” With an idea in mind, Flinn and Lee did some digging around with local law enforcement and were eventually pointed in the direction of Sterling Hornbuckle, Louisburg resident and recent grand master of the Masons in Kansas. The Child Identification Program, or CHIP, is a rapidly-growing movement among Masonic lodges throughout the country. During his term as the state’s grand master in 2007-2008, Hornbuckle decided it was time to bring CHIP to Kansas. “Colorado, Nebraska, Missouri and Oklahoma were doing it,” he recalled. “So I said ‘We had better get on the ball.’” Today, more than 50 computers are spread throughout Masonic lodges in many a Kansas town, each equipped with the technology necessary to build a CHIP kit. The kit, which takes approximately 10 minutes to make, consists of several elements, including dental impressions, a DNA cheek swab, finger prints, digital photos and a short video. If the worst occurs, and a child goes missing, parents can provide law enforcement with the kit, giving them easily-accessible information to distribute to the media and other are law enforcement agencies. Beyond their physical value, the kits can provide parents with a measure of emotional relief, said Sgt. Dave Sander of the Louisburg Police Department. “It gives them some peace of mind, knowing that there’s something like this out there,” he said. The kits are given free of charge, and since the program’s inception in 2007, more than 6,000 Kansas children have participated. “It’s just so important to have that information,” Lee said. “And I know if people are sort of like me, a procrastinator, they may intend to get a lot of that stuff done on their own but never get it done.” For more information on the event, call Mary Flinn at (913) 905-7532, or Donna Lee at (913) 406-7890.
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