ChildSeek Network

Contact Information

Judy Maher
PO Box 1902
Wilsonville, Oregon 97070

Tel (503) 685-9382
Cell (503) 957-9963

E-mail: seek@childseeknetwork.com
http://www.childseeknetwork.com/?support=fight

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Sept 6, 2005

Professional Boxer David Rodela, Child Seek Network and Athlete Representative Krysti Rosario team up to “Fight For The Missing”

On September 10th, 2005 light feather weight pro boxer David Rodela, the Child Seek Network and Athlete Representative for the National Board of Directors for USA Boxing Krysti Rosario will bring the faces of missing children to the ring.

The event will take place at Staples Center, 1111 S. Figueroa Street · Los Angeles CA 90015. The bout will be Pepe Montoya (5-1) vs. David Rodela (2-0-1)

Team Rodela will be wearing jackets that have the faces of missing brothers Joel and Mario Lopez. Twelve year old Joel and his six year old brother Mario lived in Fresno California. On March 8, 2005 the young boys went to a school yard to play basketball.

That was the last time anyone saw them.

When a child goes missing it is important to keep their story and information in the public eye.

David Rodela being a public figure knows that he can assist in helping the plight of missing children by lending his name and support in the effort to locate them.

It is our hope and his that by doing so other pro boxers will join us and “Fight for the Missing”.


Krysti Rosario is the Athlete Representative on the National Board of Directors for USA Boxing.

The Child Seek Network is a non-profit 501c (3) organization based in Oregon that assists families and law enforcement in the search to bring missing person. Child Seek Network fosters community involvement through education, events, and resources.

For more information contact the Child Seek Network at (503)685-9382 or Che Ramirez, publicist for David Rodela (805)815-1960 or Krysti Rosario http://www.usaboxingrep.com/

Child Seek Network unveils database for missing adults

Aug 3, 2005, 08:43 AM

The Child Seek Network is helping to focus attention on cases that involve missing adults; it's putting a new database online.

The group says it's designed to make the search for missing adults easier for police and the general public.

An Oregon woman who's husband disappeared last october, says the website offers hope to those who are still searching for loved ones.

"A lot of times you see the children but you don't see the adults," said Kristen Childress. "And that's what gets forgotten, is the adults that go missing. And 10 months go by and people don't remember the story. So this will keep it updated and keep it fresh in people's mind, which is wonderful."

Jeremy Childress disappeared while hunting; he has never been found. His wife hopes with hunting season coming back around, more evidence will be found.

Database for missing children goes online

source: [Link]
May 25, 2005

Child Seek Network, an Oregon-based nonprofit devoted to missing children, has started a database designed to help the public and law enforcement search missing-children cases.

The project will be officially launched today on National Missing Children's Day. Cases are searchable using the child's name, type of case, state, keywords or Amber Alerts.

The database can be found at www.childseeknetwork.com.

The Child Seek Network assists in finding missing people by creating and distributing fliers and posters and creating Web site tools for families of the missing. They also assist families in coming up with fund-raising ideas to help pay rewards

Internet a tool in missing persons cases

January 30,2005
Mark Lineberger
staff writer

Judy Maher gets up every day at 4 a.m. and gets in front of the computer. She scans news feeds from across the country, looking for Amber Alerts and any information she can find about the thousands of children reported missing in the United States everyday.

She puts the information on the online forums at the Child Seek Network, an Oregon-based organization that uses the power of the Internet to disseminate the details of missing persons cases worldwide. Then she goes to work as a school cook, checking the news throughout the day. When she gets home in the afternoon, she's either working with families of the missing or back in front of the computer until it's time to go to bed.

In years past, the best a family member could hope for was to see their missing loved one's face on a milk carton or bulk mail flyer. Thanks to the World Wide Web, the milk carton has been replaced by the computer screen.

Within hours of the news breaking that Gail Haddock-Dail and her 15-year-old granddaughter Heather Roberts had disappeared en route from Kinston to Virginia Dec.7, online news sites, forums and message boards were already circulating pictures and details of the case.

It wasn't long until Roberts and Haddock-Dail made it onto Maher's list.

The Child Seek Network started as a grassroots effort in 2002, after two teenage girls from Oregon went missing only to turn up murdered.

"It was during that time that I found out just how many missing children there are," said Carol Knowlton, vice-president of the Child Seek Network. "Each time I saw or read a story about missing children one thing kept tugging at my heart and that was wondering how the families of these missing persons could cope with the pain of not knowing where their children were."

With a core staff of dedicated assistants, Maher's website grew from a small project into a non-profit organization that receives hundreds of thousands of hits on the web.

Maher said the Internet has changed the way people can share information. She tells the story of a 14-year-old girl from Washington State who struck up a relationship with a stranger in an online chat room. The stranger happened to be a man in his 40s who eventually suggested that the two meet. One thing led to another and the girl was kidnapped.

Once the story started to spread on the Internet, computer savvy individuals were able to track the kidnapper through his online postings, eventually leading police to his home. They rescued the girl from his home, where she had been drugged, chained to the bed and used as a sex slave. It was a reprehensible act, but the girl was still found alive.

"That's a case where someone was saved by the Internet," Maher said, "We also have a web page set up where people can leave anonymous tips."

Her website also serves as a support group for the families left wondering.

"It gives the parents an outlet through message boards and live chat," Maher said, "And a place for others to offer prayers and thoughts to the families."

"We try very hard to make sure that we are known as a reputable and valuable resource in the world of missing persons," Knowlton said. "We feel that it is very important that the families we work with understand that we do not actually go 'find' a missing person, but we are there to offer support and resources to them."

The website pays for its considerable bandwidth costs entire through donations. Some of the money is also used to print out flyers, organize vigils and get the cases out in the public eye.

Several other websites have also helped spread the details of the missing Kinston women, like the one Brenda and Gene Wilson operate out of their Arkansas home.

Like the Child Seek Network, the Wilsons started their site after a local girl, a friend of their daughter's, was abducted and murdered.

"Believe it or not, the Internet is a great tool for finding missing people," Brenda Wilson said. Case in point is a case the Wilsons linked to their website a couple of years ago when two children were kidnapped from Modesto, Calif.

"From keeping this site updated, we happened to see the woman and two kids in town here," Brenda Wilson said. "So I called the District attorney in Modesto and they manage to catch them a couple of miles away from here."

Their online traffic has increased so much that the couple now pays a large sum of money to their web service provider up front to avoid being shut down.

In addition to being a virtual world-wide bulletin board, the web has also by its nature become the world-wide gossip fence.

Several online forums have given people from around the world the opportunity to speculate and offer their own theories on what happened to Haddock-Dail and Roberts.

A message thread about the case on Enctoday.com, for example, received nearly 200 comments and 1,200 views in just over two weeks - with just as many theories offered about what happened.

Similar conversations have popped up on several of the message forums that populate cyberspace.

Whether posting gossip or fact, as long as there are ways to get the word out to more and more people, there is hope for a resolution.

"I actually love keeping this site updated," Brenda Wilson said, "Because even if we only help find one kid, it does make a difference."


Mark Lineberger can be reached at (252) 527-3191, Ext. 251, or mlineberger@freedomenc.com.

A time to remember the lost is also a time to rejoice the found

Activists and relatives herald Oregon teen Cynthia Lamb's return home while remembering children who are still missing

Sunday, September 05, 2004
EMILY TSAO
www.oregonlive.com/

OREGON CITY -- A barbecue initially meant to remember the disappearance of Cynthia Lamb turned into a more joyous event Saturday as about 50 volunteers and Lamb's family gathered to celebrate the teen's homecoming.


"We were so lucky she returned safely," said Judy Maher, president of the Wilsonville-based Child Seek Network, which organized the event.
After Lamb, who was 16 at the time, disappeared from the Molalla Public Library in October 2003, Child Seek provided moral support for her family, distributed fliers and held candlelight vigils.

Lamb, who authorities said was an endangered runaway, returned to Oregon last month after authorities discovered her living in Montana with a sex offender twice her age.

The celebration at Clackamette Park also served as a remembrance for children who have not been so lucky. On Saturday, Lamb wore a sweater covered with two dozen buttons that displayed the pictures of missing children.

There are about 40 Oregon children listed as missing by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Maher said. They include children who were abducted or ran away.

"Not all of these children have a voice. Not all of their families have a voice. We want to be that voice," Maher said.

As children laughed and squirmed while they got their faces painted, a nearby display featured fliers of missing children staring out from photographs with silent smiles.

The missing children come from places such as Bend, Coos Bay, Salem and Portland. Some have been gone so long that fliers have two photos capturing the past and the possible present. In the enhanced images, missing infants have turned into toddlers, boys have become teenagers, girls are now young women.

Child Seek does not limit its assistance to children or to people living in Oregon. Fliers on display Saturday included Brooke Wilberger, the 19-year-old who disappeared from Corvallis in May and Sofia Juarez, now 6, last seen in her bedroom with her brother in Kennewick, Wash., on Feb. 4, 2003.

Maher founded Child Seek in 2002 after another high-profile missing-children's case: Ashley Pond and Miranda Gaddis of Oregon City. Investigators discovered the girls' bodies in the yard of a neighbor, Ward Weaver, later that year. Weaver is accused of killing them and awaits trial in Clackamas County.

Child Seek also provided parents tips and tools for when a child disappears. Child Seek handed out DNA kits that included forms, a plastic bag and cotton swabs for parents to store blood samples, teeth and fingernail clippings.

Tracey Lamb, Cynthia Lamb's stepmother, has been volunteering at Child Seek. She said the support she received from other families of missing children during her stepdaughter's disappearance made the ordeal a bit easier.

"You always think that that could never happen to us," she said. "And you realize that no matter how safe you think you are or protective you are of your children, it can happen to anybody."

Douglas French, 34, the convicted sex offender found in Montana with Lamb, will be tried Oct. 14 on a charge of custodial interference. French is accused of taking Lamb and helping her leave the state. Lamb used Internet chat rooms to ask a number of men to help her run away, Molalla police have said.

Even with Cynthia Lamb at home, Tracey Lamb said, the ordeal is not over.

"We are learning a new Cyndi," Tracey Lamb said. "This experience has changed us forever. We are getting to know each other again."

Internet group puts Sinclair case online

By PATRICK ARMSTRONG
Reformer Staff
Tuesday, February 18, 2003 - 12:35:11 AM MST
Brattleboro Reformer

CHESTERFIELD, N.H. -- As officials continue their investigation into the disappearance of Tina and Bethany Sinclair, an Oregon-based group is putting information about the case on the Internet.

The Child Seek Network, an Internet group that seeks to help locate missing children and help prevent child abductions, became involved in the Sinclair case after they were contacted by a family member, said Judy Maher, administrator of the network.

"I think what drew us on this is that we were asked," she added.

Tina Sinclair, 34, and her daughter, Bethany, 15, were last seen on the night of Feb. 3, 2001, when Tina picked up Bethany at the movies. At the time of their disappearance, the Sinclairs were living with Tina's boyfriend, Eugene Van Bowman, on Mountain Road, which runs along the Connecticut River in West Chesterfield.

Van Bowman told then-Chesterfield Police Lt. Lester Fairbanks, who went to the house after Keene High School contacted Chesterfield police about Bethany's absence, that the two women moved out after he and Tina had a fight.

Neither Tina's cat nor her car had been taken, however, and as the weeks went by, her cell phone mailbox became filled with unretrieved messages, her mail was uncollected and her credit cards were unused.

Family members of Tina and Bethany contend Van Bowman, who is currently incarcerated for a separate sexual assault charge against a minor, played a role in the disappearance of the two women.

Van Bowman is scheduled to be released on parole in April.

Law enforcement officials have not named Van Bowman or anyone else as a suspect in the disappearance.

At a Feb. 4 press conference, New Hampshire State Police Sgt. Peter Riesenberg said, "I think they disappeared under very suspicious circumstances, and I'll leave it at that."

The Sinclairs are still technically considered a missing persons case.

Maher started the Child Seek Network in June, moved by the disappearance of Oregon City girls Ashley Pond and Miranda Gaddis.

"I really don't know why I became so involved. I guess it's because I've worked with children my whole career," said Maher, who has worked at a high school cafeteria for 21 years.

Since the Web site started, it has grown dramatically, said Maher, with daily e-mails asking for information or thanking the network for their involvement. "It's a huge response -- absolutely unbelievable," she added.

The network posts information about missing children on the Web site and uses researchers to find out information about different cases. Though they typically do not "work as vigorously on the adults," in the Sinclairs' case, the two disappearances are connected, and thus information on Tina is included as well as Bethany, Maher indicated.

Family members of Tina and Bethany have frequently called for more attention on the case. Maher said she thought the amount of publicity a disappearance or abduction receives is often based on the economic status and ethnicity of those involved, as well as any extraordinary circumstances in the disappearance.

A $5,000 reward for information leading to the whereabouts of Tina and Bethany Sinclair has been posted by Cheshire County Crimestoppers Inc., who can be reached at (603) 357-6600.

New Hampshire State Police, who are investigating the case, can be reached at (603) 271-3636 or (603) 358-3333.

Child Seek Network can be reached online at www.childseeknetwork.com or by mail at Child Seek Network P.O. Box 1902 Wilsonville, OR 97070.

Seeking the lost children

A local woman starts an Internet group to help find missing and exploited kids
www.wilsonvillenews.com/
Photo By Danielle Frost

Judy Maher began the Child Seek Network after the disappearances of two Oregon City girls last year. The on-line group now has 190 subscribers across the country. “We offer people hope,” Maher said.

By Danielle Frost
Wilsonville Spokesman
Judy Maher's day usually begins at 3 a.m., when she boots up her computer, sits down and searches for missing children.
She does this for two hours until it's time to go to her other job as a food services employee at Wilsonville High School.
"People say I'm crazy for trying to do all of this," she said. "But it's so important."
Maher started a web site after the disappearances of Ashley Pond and Miranda Gaddis of Oregon City. At first, her site was a place for people to seek solace and share theories about what might have happened.
In August, police found the bodies of both girls buried in the backyard of Ward Weaver, a neighbor. He is awaiting trial on murder charges in the Clackamas County Jail.
After the girls were found, Maher's website evolved into the Child Seek Network. It is a group of volunteers whose aim is to assist in the search for missing children through research, information and communication, according to their website.
"The tragic loss of these beautiful girls (Ashley and Miranda) only strengthened our resolve to help in some manner, and the network was formed," it states.
Maher said that since the site was formed, there have been more than 300,000 hits. It's sparked media attention from as far away as Vermont.
"I was amazed at the response," Maher said. "I had no idea. What happens is that children disappear, they're in the media for awhile, then nothing. We have a lot of parents coming to us for help. It's sad that there is a need for it, but a lot of them never get closure."
She has 190 regular subscribers. One of them is a woman whose two daughters have been missing for 28 years.
"She's still looking," Maher said. "It's so sad."
Maher researches missing child cases by talking with law enforcement, checking on-line news wires and reading public records.
"I think about it all day," she said. "I check my email and update cases daily. I have people who help me with that. They are people from all over the country who have come together."
In addition to news reports and public records, Maher hears about cases through families. They fill out an on-line questionnaire about their missing relative and forward it to Maher.
Some recent cases she's researching include the disappearance of 6-year-old Logan Tucker from Oklahoma and 5-year-old Sofia Juarez from Washington.
Both children were last seen at home.
"It just breaks my heart," Maher said.
The group also helps look for adults, such as 22-year-old Ryan Katcher, missing since November 2000. He was last seen at his residence. He was featured in Child Seed's monthly newsletter, along with 13-year-old Erica Baker.
"Never let others forget your son or daughter," Ryan's mother wrote. "This bad experience can either make you or break you. Take care of yourself. If you don't, who will find your child?"
Erica's brother shared his feelings about her disappearance in the newsletter.
"When Erica went missing I broke down. I am now unable to work and I missed out on most of my junior and senior years of high school," he wrote.
Maher said those kinds of stories are why Child Seek is needed.
"If it isn't there, they're forgotten" she said. "Families need hope that they will be found. No child deserves to be stolen and abused. They need to be sent home."
The group has not solved any cases yet, but Maher said they have offered families hope.
"They thank us for helping," she said. "The sad thing in this world is, the two groups who can't defend themselves (children and pets) are the ones who are hurt the most."
Maher has a 26-year-old daughter and said she's not sure how she'd continue functioning if her child went missing.
"I love kids," she said. "I try to keep my eyes and ears open. I think people should be the eyes for every child. I just think we need more public awareness. Times have changed."
Child Seek urges parents to talk with their children about potential dangers.
"Education and communication, according to police, are two of the most important factors in protecting your children," the site states. "It is always very important to be willing to listen to them."
The Child Seek Network can be found on-line at www.childseeknetwork.com. Maher can be contacted at seek@childseeknetwork.com.