Written by: Rosalind Guy, Memphis Daily News

Searching for a missing child is no laughing matter. It's easy to imagine that for people involved in a search - family, volunteer workers and law enforcement officials - passing moments can seem like hours.

But the Commission on Missing and Exploited Children (COMEC) is hoping people have lots of fun this weekend searching for missing treasure at the Pink Palace Museum.

COMEC's first treasure hunt event takes place Sunday from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., with the actual treasure hunt contest at 3 p.m. General admission is $10 and children younger than 2 get in free.

Besides the treasure hunt, there also will be live entertainment, photo opportunities with "Sesame Street" characters Elmo and Cookie Monster plus McGruff the Crime Dog. Rural Metro Ambulance will have an ambulance on the Pink Palace grounds for children to explore.

Tran Bui, COMEC board president and event co-chair, said the event flows from the groups' mission of searching for missing children.

"We decided to have a treasure hunt because it ties in well - searching for missing children - because they are our treasures," Bui said.

The why of it

COMEC was founded in 1984 by retired Juvenile Court Judge Kenneth Turner to protect children from criminal and sexual exploitation.

Almost 800,000 children younger than 18 were reported missing nationwide in a one-year period, resulting in an average of 2,185 children being reported missing each day, according to the 2002 U.S. Department of Justice "National Estimates of Missing Children: An Overview."

More than 200,000 of those were family abductions, 58,200 were non-family abductions and 115 involved someone the child didn't know. The former are known as "stereotypical" kidnappings.

Money and exposure

If Sunday's fundraiser is a success, it could become an annual event for COMEC, Bui said. Previously, COMEC hosted only one fundraiser a year, a gala ball, but the event never raised the $100,000 needed to support the organization for an entire year.

The event this weekend has a multifaceted purpose, the greatest of which is to raise money for the 23-year-old nonprofit organization.

Another purpose for the event is to inform the community of the resources available through COMEC.

COMEC provides prevention and intervention programs that focus on child exploitation. It produces child safety I.D.s (fingerprinting, photo identification and DNA collection), provides technical assistance and volunteer manpower to help find missing children and administers AMBER Alerts for the West Tennessee region.

Also known as "America's Missing: Broadcasting Emergency Response," AMBER alerts are issued when broadcasters and transportation authorities immediately distribute information about recent child abductions, enabling entire communities to help in the search for and safe recovery of missing children.

"If your child turns up missing, you'd call the police department," Bui said. "And the police department has to call us to find out if it warrants an AMBER Alert. Just because a child turns up missing, that doesn't mean we can issue an AMBER Alert."

To issue an AMBER Alert, COMEC officials try to make certain a given case is not a runaway or one in which a child is just visiting a friend's house but might have neglected to tell parents. AMBER Alerts only are issued when it's believed a child is in immediate danger.

A common myth about child abductions is the belief that a child is more likely to be snatched by a stranger.

"(Stranger abductions are) very rare ... but it happens," Bui said. "So, we don't want to give people a false sense of security. But most of the time, it's a parental abduction, where there's a custody case or a sexual predator in the neighborhood."

People may visit Web sites such as www.familywatchdog./us/Default.asp and plug in a ZIP code to find out if a convicted sexual predator is living in the community.

However, the accuracy of the information found on such sites depends on how often those predators update their contact information with law enforcement officials.

When it gets personal

Bui said one of the hurdles COMEC must overcome in raising awareness is the fact that many people tend not to think about an organization like COMEC until the issue of missing children hits close to home.

"I was a TV news reporter for about 12 years and I was always covering these stories, you know, talking to parents who had their children come up missing," she said. "And your heart breaks (while you're covering the story), but then you just go on with your life."

Bui's years in television included a stint as a reporter and news anchor for WPTY-TV ABC 24/WLMT-TV UPN 30 from February 2001 to November 2005. She also worked as a freelance television anchor for the National Cotton Council (NCC).

It wasn't until Bui became a mother two years ago that she began to think of child abduction on a more personal level.

"When I became a mom and got that feeling when I'd turn a corner and I didn't see (my son), at a grocery store or even in my own yard, it's just that panic feeling and to imagine a parent going through that and the panic feeling lasting, not just a few minutes, but days or even years at times," she said. "And that's what we deal with a lot is that people don't think about COMEC until it happens to them or they see a big missing-children's case on TV."

In addition to the COMEC treasure hunt, Gold Strike Casino in Tunica is hosting a family safety day June 9 at the Tunica Recreation Center. All proceeds from that event also will benefit COMEC.

For more information about COMEC or either event, visit www.comec.org or call 405-8441.