Finding Missing Kids Is Mission Of Georgia-Based Company

ATLANTA, GA — Finding missing children is difficult and it always has been. Every 40 seconds a child is reported missing somewhere in America. Some are runaways, but others are abducted. In Georgia, at least 171 children have been reported missing since 1994.

Since the year 2000, the process of finding missing children has improved a great deal, thanks in large part to a Georgia-based company, LexisNexis Risk Solutions. LexisNexis Risk Solutions is a company that helps businesses through advanced technology and analytics. In 2000, LexisNexis took its skills and talents and partnered with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

ADAM was born, named for Adam Walsh, the boy abducted from a suburban Florida shopping mall in 1981 and murdered. The Automated Delivery of Alerts on Missing Children, or ADAM, Program quickly distributes missing child posters from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children to specific geographic search areas.

"ADAM uses advanced technology to distribute missing child posters to police, news media, schools, businesses, medical centers and other recipients within a specific geographic search area, such as a state, zip code, area code or a combined search area near a city and zip code," said Trish McCall, director of program management and head of ADAM at LexisNexis Risk Solutions.

Just in Georgia, there are 66 active missing children currently in the ADAM program.

"The nice thing is that ADAM targets specific addresses, leveraging Google maps," she said. "That way officials can target a specific highway corridor, Interstate 75 or I-20, for example. Missing child information can be passed quickly to gas stations, shopping malls, or hospitals. The program can now also incorporate keywords to target something like a campground for example."

Since 2000, LexisNexis Risk Solutions has assisted the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in the recovery of more than 800 children. To date, the ADAM program has resulted in locating over 175 missing children.

"As a company, we're really proud of our efforts to find missing children," McCall said. "It's really ingrained in the culture here."

So much so, in fact, company employees participate in the Rock One Sock campaign, annually. People wear one sock and take a photo or a video as a simple way to show support for missing children and their families.
LexisNexis Risk Solutions employees rally around this cause and get their communities involved as well.

So often, people feel powerless to help with such a daunting task as finding missing children but there is now an easy way for people to help through ADAM.

"It's important that both businesses and individuals sign up for alerts from ADAM," McCall said. "At the end of the day, the more eyeballs on the street looking for missing children, the better."

Individuals and businesses can sign up here to help in these efforts.

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Photos courtesy LexisNexis Risk Solutions