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Photo mailer campaign marks 25 years of bringing missing children home
12:00 AM CDT on Tuesday, June 22, 2010 By ANANDA BOARDMAN / The Dallas Morning News
Albert Blue knows the value of a good photograph.
'I didn't lose hope because I always saw her picture,' says Albert Blue, whose daughter Chaderia, now 10, was abducted as a toddler and recovered at age 6. A flier with an age-enhanced photo of Chaderia found its way to a Mansfield woman, who thought she looked like the girl living upstairs.
His daughter was missing for five years, and a "Have You Seen Me?" flier featuring her photo is what led to her recovery.
Chaderia Blue was abducted by her mother in 2001 at the age of 21 months.
"I didn't lose hope because I always saw her picture," said Blue, who lives in the Red Bird area of Dallas. "I never gave up hope."
Chaderia was found when a Mansfield woman saw the girl's digitally enhanced photograph on a flier that came in the mail. The woman thought the picture looked a lot like the little girl who lived upstairs, so she called the 800 number printed on the back.
The flier that helped bring Chaderia home is one of millions distributed weekly by Valassis Communications Inc. as part of the "America's Looking for Its Missing Children" program. Almost 150 children have been recovered through the program, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.
The missing children's photos "reach 74 million households in the mail per week, over 100 million with the addition of newspapers," said Vince Guiliano, a senior vice president at Michigan-based Valassis.
The photos are on newspaper wraps and coupon booklets, such as those that appear with The Dallas Morning News . They're also displayed at post offices and stores such as Walmart. The flier that showed Chaderia's age-enhanced photo was one of those distributed under the RedPlum brand.
"The picture they enhanced looked so much like her," Blue said. "It wasn't a problem for someone to recognize her."
Case workers at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children contacted local law enforcement, who returned Chaderia, then 6, to her father.
"I was so excited, I couldn't get there fast enough," he said.
Blue says he and his now-10-year-old daughter are "like two peas in a pod," but adds that Chaderia had to relearn her name, still struggles with trust issues and is a grade behind in school.
"The victim is the child," said Guiliano, who created the program. "They lose the ability to form relationships, to trust."
Guiliano said many children are forced to learn new identities after a domestic abduction, even though they know who they are. They often miss out on formative behaviors, such as playing with other children, because they are kept away from their peers.
Guiliano started work on the fliers after seeing the film Adam , based on the story of John and Revé Walsh's son Adam, who was abducted and killed in 1981. After speaking with John Walsh, Guiliano and his employees decided to routinely put missing children's photos on their products. They pitched the idea to the center for missing children, and, after promising to not exploit the situation, officially began the program in May 1985. Guiliano has since become a board member of the center.
Through the years, the program has evolved: The company has switched to larger, full-color photographs, started using age-progression photo illustrations, and begun including a photograph of the person last seen with the missing child when possible. The program recently expanded to Spanish-language publications.
The "Have You Seen Me?" program is responsible for 87 percent of the leads received by the missing children's center.
While Valassis does not place photographs on milk cartons, other partners of the missing children's center have used that method. Four hundred private-sector photo partners work with the national center, with Valassis the largest.
Children have been found across the U.S. and as far away as the island of Malta. But no child is ever forgotten.
Lisa Monique Lambert disappeared in Baltimore on October 17, 1979, at the age of 14. Her mother, Marlene Chestnut, has never given up hope that her daughter will be found.
The girl's picture is featured on the 25th anniversary mailer, along with an enhanced photograph showing what she may look like now, at age 44.
"I'm so glad they picked her up" for the flier, Chestnut said. "It's exactly what I needed, because she's been gone so long."
Chestnut said she remembers the day her daughter disappeared. She was out of town at a funeral, but called home several times that night. Her daughter was last seen walking home from church.
"I don't know where my baby is," Chestnut said. "But I just don't feel like she's deceased.
"I'm tenacious. I hang on to an idea or belief – you have to show me I'm wrong. So far, nobody has."
