Firms Offer Ways to Help Protect a Child From Abduction, Mishaps
Ed Corwin was in his Florida backyard three years ago when he heard a splash in a nearby canal. His 14-month-old son, so close by a moment before, had vanished.
What might have been another drowning statistic ended happily--the toddler had made his way into the house and was actually watching the rescuers’ frantic dives into the canal. But the event brought home to Corwin how quickly a child can disappear, no matter how closely supervised.
The plight of missing children and their families was drawn into focus last week with the reshowing of “Adam,” a TV docudrama about a couple whose 6-year-old son disappeared from a Florida shopping center. At least two Southern California businesses seized the opportunity to publicize efforts to prevent “Adam” tragedies--and near-tragedies like Corwin’s--from happening.
Soon after the canal episode, Corwin abandoned the construction business to form San Bernardino-based Cortrex Electronics, whose sole product is the Kiddie Alert, a radio monitoring system that electronically flags a parent when something is amiss.
The system consists of a brightly decorated, 2-inch-square transmitter clipped to a child’s belt, and a receiver, about the size of a deck of cards, carried by the parent. An alarm and warning light on the receiver are activated if the child wanders--or is taken--beyond a preset range of 25 to 300 feet.
Additionally, the alarm sounds if the transmitter is forcibly removed from the child or if the child falls into water. If a child feels threatened, he or she can push a button to alert the parent.
The $130 system, which is being test-marketed and is available in limited quantities at Bergstroms Children’s Stores and Baby News specialty shops, “is not designed to replace parenting or replace care,” Cortrex marketing director Bill Bartholomew said last week.
“And in the case of ‘Adam’ or Laura Bradbury (a 3-year-old who was abducted from a Joshua Tree campsite last fall), it wouldn’t stop the attempt from being made,” he said. “But once they were out of range (of the receiver) . . . the parents would have known in 10 seconds that something was up. They could have reacted and taken appropriate measures.”
Meanwhile, Ralphs Grocery Co. last Wednesday supplied home fingerprinting and identification kits in the form of a full-page advertisement in several Southern California newspapers.
The ad shows parents how to clearly record a child’s 10 fingerprints, with space for a picture and other identifying information. Ralphs is also making available an additional 100,000 forms in English and Spanish at its 126 area stores.
Authorities point out that children don’t carry multiple forms of identification the way adults do. Moreover, a child abducted as an infant might be unrecognizable to his or her parents if several years went by--a problem the FBI encountered recently when 5-year-old Elvia Vasquez of Venice was discovered in Anchorage, Alaska, four years after her abduction.
“Complete identification records for their children are something many parents would like to have but don’t have time to assemble,” said Al Marasca, Ralphs executive vice president for marketing. “This kit helps solve this problem and, we hope, raises public awareness about the need to protect our children.”
