When a child goes missing today, word is spread through an Amber Alert or digital missing persons poster — but national efforts to increase awareness of missing kids began four decades ago with a ...

"We were an organization seeking a way to get messaging out to the community about missing children. One of those ways was the side of milk cartons." The group can reach millions of people with ...

“People will have to think about it.” A 1985 Palm Beach Post story about the milk-carton initiative. (Newspapers.com) “With so many children missing,” The New York Times reported in ...

The milk carton campaign began to fade out in the late 1980s as people began to question whether it actually helped find any missing children alive. The strategy also faded in Canada. "What it did ...

Getting such messages out as quickly as possible is considered key in helping law enforcement find missing people ... vanished children stared out from milk cartons during a short-lived initiative ...

Before Facebook, Amber Alerts and text messages, pictures on milk cartons ... the late 1980s, the cartons are still a prominent image for people thinking about missing kids.

Patz's father, a professional photographer, made copies of Etan's picture and distributed them far and wide, raising the profile of the missing-person ... on the sides of milk cartons.