[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 97 (Monday, July 20, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1351-E1352]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           AMERICA'S LOOKING FOR ITS MISSING CHILDREN PROGRAM

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. JOHN M. McHUGH

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                         Monday, July 20, 1998

  Mr. McHUGH. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call attention to a very 
important program. It's not a government program, but an example of our 
private sector partnering effectively with the public sector to tackle 
pressing social problems.
  In 1985, ADVO, Inc., the nation's largest direct mail marketing 
company, partnered with The National Center for Missing and Exploited 
Children. The Adam Walsh Child Resource Center, the Juvenile Division 
of the Department of Justice, and the U.S. Postal Service to lend a 
hand in the recovery of missing and exploited children. One of the 
leaders of that partnership, ADVO Senior Vice President Vincent 
Giuliano, recently came to Capitol Hill to share with the Congressional 
Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus this amazing success story. I 
encourage my colleagues and every citizen to take an interest in this 
important program, which is doing so much to help the nation's missing 
and exploited children.
  As a direct result of this innovative program, ADVO has helped the 
authorities recover 88 children and to reunite them with their 
families.

[[Page E1352]]

Approximately one out of every seven children featured in the program 
has been recovered.
  How was this amazing success possible? First, a bit of background 
about ADVO's business. In delivering its advertising circulars, ADVO 
utilizes a little white card that functions as the address label and is 
detached from the advertising package itself. Most of us probably 
wouldn't have seen much in those cards. But Vince Giuliano saw in those 
cards an opportunity. Because he realized that those cards reach a huge 
portion of the American public--today they are seen by over 150 million 
Americans living in more than 60 million homes every week, and reach 
another 13 million homes through ADVO's direct mail partners--he saw 
possibility. He saw in that huge distribution network an opportunity to 
help find America's missing and exploited children.
  Mr. Giuliano developed a public service program through which ADVO 
printed the pictures of missing children on those address cards. The 
U.S. Postal Service is a proud partner with ADVO, having changed its 
regulations in 1985 to allow pictures and data provided by the National 
Center for Missing and Exploited Children to appear on the cards.
  In addition to the obvious benefit of finding missing children, the 
program makes other contributions. The pictures of the missing children 
on the cards help raise public awareness and sensitivity to the problem 
of missing and exploited children. In addition, the program serves as a 
powerful deterrent to would-be abductors, to whom this program states, 
``You can run, but you can't hide.'' And, this program makes sure that 
no child is forgotten no matter how long he or she has been missing.
  Accompanying Mr. Giuliano as he spoke to the Caucus was Krystle 
Bondello of Warminister, Pennsylvania. She is the living embodiment of 
the success of this program. She was abducted by her non-custodial 
father in 1993 and has been the subject of a nationwide search by 
police and the FBI. After no leads turned up in the case, Krystle 
appeared on one of the ADVO fliers which at that time reached 57 
million homes.
  Within a couple of hours of the deliveries of those cards, the FBI 
tracked her father to California and Krystle was ultimately recovered 
and reunited with her mother.
  Because of so many success stories like Krystle's, this program has 
been widely and deservedly praised. It won the award of excellence from 
the Adam Walsh Child Resource Center on January 28, 1986. On July 23, 
1987, President Reagan presented ADVO the Steuben Glass Tetrahedron, 
the most prestigious Presidential Award for Private Sector Initiatives. 
On September 24, 1987 he honored ADVO with the President's Child Safety 
Partnership Award.
  President Bush and Congressional leaders celebrated National Missing 
Children's Day and the fifth anniversary of the program by honoring 
three ``Unsung Heroes'' for their role in helping to reunite missing 
children with their families with a Capitol Hill ceremony on May 25, 
1990.
  ADVO recently added an innovative enhancement to the program in hopes 
of recovering more missing children. It now targets its photo 
distribution to leverage the NCMEC's and the FBI's intelligence, when 
possible, on the likely whereabouts of a missing child. A photo can now 
be pinpointed to one of six regions in the country, or distributed 
nationwide over a six-week period.
  If imitation is, indeed, the most sincere form of flattery, the folks 
at ADVO deserve to feel flattered. Other organizations--including 
several Members of Congress--have recognized the effectiveness of 
ADVO's program and are starting spin-off programs of their own. For 
example, my office recently began working with NCMEC and the New York 
State Missing & Exploited Children Clearinghouse to identify three 
children from my congressional district who are currently missing. 
Soon, the envelopes sent from my office will bear the photos of those 
kids in an effort to raise awareness and perhaps locate and recover 
them.
  I want to take this opportunity to praise ADVO for its spirit of 
innovation and for caring enough to work to tackle this heartbreaking 
and seemingly intractable problem. I also want to commend the United 
States Postal Service, for amending its regulations to allow that 
creative spirit to flourish. The National Center for Missing and 
Exploited Children, The Adam Walsh Child Resource Center, and The 
Juvenile Division of the Department of Justice are all cooperating 
organizations and are also deserving of our thanks. Finally, I wish to 
commend and to thank all of the noble Americans who took it upon 
themselves to look at these cards and contact the authorities with 
information. Without this final ingredient of citizen participation, 
these amazing results would not have been possible.

                          ____________________