A scene all too familiar on the nightly news was played out once more this week on television, another carjacking, while a small child sleeps soundly in the back seat. As the carjacker races away, the panicked mother races to call 911 for help. After calling 911, the mother, calls the boy's father to let him know what was happening and where the carjacking had happened. As the father races toward the scene of the car jacking, he tries to call the mother on her cell phone. Imagine his surprise when expecting to reach the boy's mother, instead he hears his son's frightened and confused voice saying hello.

Apparently, the mother's car phone had been left in the car during the car jacking. The car phone would prove to be the key technology that would help reunite the little boy with his family before the day was over. In the carjackers mad dash from the scene of the carjacking the little boy was jolted awake. Startled the little boy began asking the carjacker what was happening, the twenty questions startled the man and he quickly abandoned both the car and the boy on a quiet road. The boy, who was now alone in the car, was frightened and relieved to hear his dad's familiar voice when he answered his mom's phone.

Dad convinced his son to get out of the car and to start walking to go look for help. The boy could hear a helicopter flying nearby in the sky above, convincing the father his son was not far off. The boy soon came up to a school and a man was walking out of the school on his break when the boy handed him the phone and asked him to help him. Soon the police were on the scene, the parents arrived and the family was reunited.

What continues to be amazing is how everyday gadgets, and technology, continue to help reunite missing children and families in new and unexpected ways. Simple gadgetry like car phones, digital cameras, camcorders, GPS, e-mail, surveillance cameras, PDA's, televisions, radios, highway information signs, amber alerts, neighborhood watch programs, and many more. However, none of these amazing technological devices would work with out the people who use them. People are the reason that children who are missing and exploited are rescued daily, because someone decided to listen to their gut instinct when they felt something was not right.

Every week you receive in your mail box a direct advertisement mailing from ADVO. ADVO mails out a small white card with the face of a missing child on one side of the advertisement to over 67 million homes nationwide. Can you imagine how many missing children we could find if everyone who receives this mailer actually looked at the child on the card?

Please show the card to your children. After all, if a missing child relocates to your neighborhood who would better know than your child who is in the same classroom, school or riding on the same bus. Children are much more observant than adults when it comes to situations like these. Take that card and leave it in a public place like a doctor's office or post it in the supermarket where someone walking by may recognize the child. Anyone of us can bring home a missing child. Please look at your ADVO mailer and help reunite a family.