Riverside Hotline Serves Survivors

Volunteers tap at keyboards and answer phones in a windowless basement room in Riverside, waiting for the next desperate caller.

The Temecula-based National Next of Kin Registry, an Internet database that helps loved ones find one another in an emergency, set up the impromptu call center in the Riverside County administrative building Wednesday night as part of the county’s efforts to help Hurricane Katrina victims locally and nationwide.

“People want information fast,” said Mark Cerney, president of the registry, which signed up 150,000 people in the last four days.

For privacy and security reasons, only public safety agencies can access the database, but displaced people and those looking for them can provide information that can be matched up and lead to a reunion.

The nonprofit group has dispatched 400 volunteers to Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, where they are combing shelters and neighborhoods to compile information about the missing and displaced, he said. The data will be entered online, where law enforcement officials and relief agencies can cross-check the information against more than 5 million registered names.

The site, www.nokr.org, provides local agencies access to an online trove of data to help family and friends connect in case of accident or natural disaster. Individuals can register their own name, address and phone number or those of people they know, and can print out a registration card at the website.

Cerney said he established the nonprofit nearly two years ago after he was devastated by the 1990 death of “Mimi,” the woman he considered a surrogate mother.

While he honeymooned in Hawaii, no one in her convalescent care home notified him of her death. When he returned, Cerney discovered she had already been buried.

“To say we were devastated is an understatement,” Cerney, 38, said. “We hope that this never happens to another family.”

The former Marine, a father of four, sold his house to fund the 100% volunteer outfit, which he runs out of his Temecula home.

The free service has been supported by the Red Cross, more than 30 states and dozens of law enforcement agencies. Though donors have given the registry a few thousand dollars since the hurricane, it runs primarily on the more than $100,000 that Cerney has poured into it, he said.

Eager for volunteers, Cerney set up the 24-hour computer and phone bank Wednesday, hoping to process more than 5,000 names backlogged since Katrina.

The response “has been overwhelming,” Cerney said. “People actually see that this is a viable resource; they’re using it.”

Volunteer Shanna Moreland, 34, of San Jacinto had already fielded 15 calls by noon Thursday. Many callers were upset and were calling the registry as a last resort after the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Red Cross couldn’t assist them, Moreland said.

One man “was just pleading for help,” she said, searching for his best friend, whom he had last seen at a barbecue.

Cerney expects thousands more hurricane-related calls, e-mails and faxes to pour in. He emphasizes the privacy of the site, whose personal data is not for commercial use or available to the Internal Revenue Service or Social Security Administration. “This is not a random lookup system,” Cerney said.