In 1981, 6-year-old Adam Walsh was abducted in Florida. His desperate parents, John and Revé Walsh, came to Washington, DC, seeking help. Seeing different sites on their drive from the airport, Revé asked, "Where is the Children's Building?" The driver responded with a blank stare. There was no children's building, no help for searching parents, and no national response to the problem. This is the beginning...

In 1984, John Walsh co-founded the private, nonprofit National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC).  NCMEC provides assistance to parents, children, law enforcement, schools, and the community in recovering missing children and raising public awareness about ways to help prevent child abduction, molestation, and sexual exploitation.

That's where Rent A Center comes in. Ann Davids, Vice President Advertising for Rent a Center, coordinates the national print and broadcast campaigns. Chris Korst, Senior Vice President and General Counsel for Rent a Center, coordinates the national KidCare Identification program.

The sheer volume of money and, more importantly, effort put forward by our industries 'big brother' is staggering.  In an interview with Ann Davids and Chris Korst, RTO Online learned that Rent A Center features missing children in all of their 30 million newspaper inserts every month.

Ann Davids
VP Advertising
"The NCMEC provides us with the profiles and photos of the missing children by region, we include them in all inserts for a total of 360 million inserts per year"

Rent A Center is producing thousands of counter displays. Each counter card will feature the photo and description of 6 missing children. The displays are updated regularly at all 2300 locations.

Chris Korst
Senior VP
"93% of all children recovered, are recovered as a result of a photograph. We can think of no better way to 'give back' to our customers than to aid in the recovery of missing children"

Rent A Center has also sponsored 8 KidCare Identification events at various locations. The heart of Project KidCare is the KidCare Photo ID, the only NCMEC-approved standard for child photo identification. It accommodates a series of updated standardized instant identification photos, as well as a child's vital statistics and valuable emergency information. Rent A Center buys the ID kit and donates to all who participate.

According to Don Shapiro, Director of Corporate Relations for the NCMEC, 1 in 7 recoveries are directly linked to the national photo distribution system.

Don Shapiro
Director of Corporate Relations
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
"Rent A Center has become a major supporter of our efforts to recover missing children. We are very proud of the new partnership and the opportunities it provides"

Rent A Center has also produced a PSA (public service announcement) concerning the effort to locate missing kids. The spot features Fox-Sports

 Broadcaster, James Brown. "We are in negotiations to run the PSA nationally with 2 of the major networks" said Ann Davids.

The amount of money spent by the nations largest Rent to Own is estimated to be in the millions. A PSA alone, of this quality, typically cost $100,000 or more.

Some large corporations look at their good works in terms of dollars spent. When asked for the amount of money Rent a Center spends annually on this effort, I was greeted by a refreshing silence...followed by the equally refreshing comment by Ann Davids "We don't look at it that way. Its just the right thing to do and we're glad to do it".

Results
3 missing children have been recovered as a direct result of Rent A Center's efforts. One from a KidCare photo, and two from the massive print campaign of flyers and brochures. 3 innocent children back home and out of danger. If that doesn't give you a warm and fuzzy feeling...your just not human.

For information on how you can get involved in the recovery of missing children, visit the official website at www.missingkids.com.

Rent A Center also features missing children on their website at www.rentacenter.com.