'We’ve never had this before': NC launches new tool aimed at bringing missing children home

On Monday, the North Carolina Center for Missing Children will launch a brand new tool officials hope will make it faster and easier to bring missing children home. 

The move comes after both a year of work, and a week that saw two high-profile amber alert cases. 

Called the Missing Child Repository, the tool is essentially a centralized database, including names and photos, of missing children in North Carolina.

It was built in house by staff at the Center for Missing Persons, and says director Morrissa Moyer, the goal is to make reunions between parents and lost kids as simple as the click of a mouse. 

“They don’t have to jump through a bunch of hoops or look through different databases,” said Moyer.

Moyer points to several advantages: for one, it makes names, agency information, and photos easy to find for families and members of the public. It also allows families to search solely based on physical characteristics, or easily look through photos, particularly important if a very young or nonverbal child is found. 

“There have been a few cases where there have been some small children, toddlers, who have been located, but can’t verbalize their name, who their parents are,” said Moyer, adding that parents “can go to the website, say this child is about two years old, blonde hair, blue eyes, put those descriptors in, and narrow down to anyone who would meet that criteria.” 

Children also won’t have to qualify for an amber alert to be listed in the Repository – a potential boon after this last week, when two different teenage girls disappeared, one in Harnett County, and the other in Siler City. In the Siler City case, the teenager was missing for an entire week before officials decided she qualified for an Amber Alert.

“It gets the word out,” said Moyer. 

There are still challenges with this system. The data is only updated once a week from the Federal NCIC database, and the center doesn’t always have access to photos. 

But Moyer says this system is still a major step in the right direction – for some of the youngest and most vulnerable North Carolinians.