NEWSLETTER

January February 2000
4thekids Web Page

Welcome All

As of December 22, 1999, 4THEKIDS had our 100th member sign on. Our seven month old organization dedicated to missing children is a growing group of volunteers. Congratulations to each one passing on to others about this organization. We can only express our gratitude to you wanting to help with missing children and choosing this organization to volunteer your time to help with missing children.

BLEVINS KIDS ARE FOUND

We received word on Friday (01/14/2000) that the F.B.I. had located the children. Also received another email from the father F. John Blevins (Gator) late last night saying that he was back at home after flying down to pick up the kids. They are doing ok, they need a little medical attention but will be ok.
I want to thank everyone that has helped with this case. First off Jerry Strahan and his P.I. Team who helped me  trace phone numbers and other things. We also want to thank SafetyEd International for the on-line resources. A big THANK YOU goes to an un-named source that helped supply many leads. (And to the member that emailed the flier to this un-named angel, THANK YOU!) You really never know how helpful emailing an Alert Notice can be. A flier sent by a member that ended up in a person's mailbox really helped with this case.
The contact with NCMEC and the Texas Department of Safety was great.
The other person that deserves a lot of credit is the father Gator. This man has lived a nightmare and faced many uphill roads, but never lost sight of the fact that getting his kids safely back was all that mattered
We will keep you posted on this case and please continue to send prayers and good thoughts out to the Blevins family.

Newsletter News

This is the first issue of the 4thekids Newsletter that is edited by Joyce Schultz. Patty and I really want to thank Joyce for taking on this task. It has really freed us up for other duties.

Something that I would like to bring up is that if anyone should have any questions about for the kids, please let Patty, Jerry, Joyce or myself know and we'll try our best to get the answers out.

Volunteers Needed

We will continue to let you know what kind of help is needed.  When you can give us a hand just let us know by contacting Dean or Patty. Addresses:Patty pbeeken@comweb.net Dean 4thekids@comweb.net

Following areas needing volunteer help:

Happy New Year

4thekids send to you wishes for a prosperous and happy New Year 2000. We pray this is the year we will continue to find more missing children. But our New Year could only begin by thanking you for the past support you have given us and for all the help we will receive in this year. Thank you for telling others about 4thekids. Continue to share our site 4thekids Our goal is to continue to improve and hone our skills and implement the most effective methods in finding missing children

FROM THE DESK OF EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
PATTY BEEKEN

Patty brings to our attention of our latest success
“This is sooo Great ! !”
Patty received the following e-mail

Dear Patty,
My name is Erika Costanzo and I work in Marketing at ONElist (we’ve merged with eGroups, thus the reason for my eGroups email address!) I want to thank you for submitting your wonderful and heartwarming story about your ONElist community, “4thekids.” I am very interested in featuring this story on our web site. I’ve taken the information you submitted and have written the following story. Please review and email your comments and/or changes back to me. Again, thank you for sharing such a wonderful story with us. We are happy to know that ONElist is truly helping people help others! I look forward to hearing back from you.
Warm Regards,
Erika Costanzo

Your Story:
------------------------------------------------------------------
4thekids - ONElist Community Helps Bring Missing Children Home

When Patty Beeken’s daughter, Jessica, ran away from home, the internet offered an extraordinary communications tool that ultimately helped her find her daughter. Through a website created to help find Jessica combined with emails sent out on her own, Patty connected with people around the world who offered their help, compassion, and similar stories.

After Jessica was found, Patty decided to take what she and learned about the internet’s power to communicate worldwide and create a forum dedicated to finding missing children. 4thekids@onelist.com was established soon afterward.

4thekids is comprised of a diverse group of volunteers who are passionate about returning lost children home. These dedicated individuals use the community to share information and to publish verified notices of missing children, and in rare cases, missing adults.

Among the community’s 90+ members are law enforcement officers, lawyers, private detectives, in addition to numerous average citizens who just want to help a good cause. The community is very careful about adhering to strict criteria established for each case. For example, community members do not pursue a case until they’ve first received approval from the law enforcement agency that is handling it.

Members of 4thekids get their motivation from knowing that if they help to return just one child safely home, their hard work has paid off. Recently the community heard from a woman who had seen a child on one of the posters the group had posted, and immediately called the police.

The community also offers free scanning and web page design for families of missing children. For information, go to http://members.tripod.com.Forthekids/

FROM THE DESK OF DEAN POWERS
CASE MGR./WEB MASTER

I hope everyone made it ok with the Y2K non-event and happy to report our database made it. Be assured we are not short sighted, we are in fact hard at work on making the 4thekids database Y-2-10K compliant. One can never plan too far ahead. So when it comes time to add another digit to the year we will be ready for the year 10,000. Lol Ok that is my last ATTEMPT at humor for the year.

Site Hits in December
We had 902 hits on our main page in December 1999. We are also averaging another 180 page views a day. (That is the total number of pages looked at each day) With everything going on during the Holiday Season, I don't think that is too shabby, not to shabby at all.

Missing Kid Cases Not Sent Over The List
Something I would like to touch on a little bit. We get contacted a lot about missing kid cases that never get sent out over the list. For the most part the child is returned home before we publish to the list. We try to have the web flier ready and approved by the parent within 24 hours from contact. A lot of the time we are forced to wait for approval and verification from law enforcement. We have also had to work on helping the parent get the case to meet our guidelines. Some times this in itself is a full time job. We have a case right now that NEEDS to be out but because the way a custody agreement was written the child is not listed as missing. Law Enforcement is trying to get it listed, we have been in contact with law colleges, legal aid groups, and even called lawyers out of the phonebook. But till we can find a lawyer will to do a little work for free we can't list the case. We will keep trying and I have faith that some-thing will turn up and we will be ready to publish the flier that is in our waiting for approval folder.

Thanks For Your Help
I want to thank everyone that took fliers with them on Holiday travels.
I also want to say THANKS for the way the Williams case was sent out. I was so impressed with the number of hits the flier received. Right in the middle of the Holiday Rush, we had a 1000 hits in the first 24 hours. WOW! And double wow when you think that the fliers that are viewed in emails sent out on the list are not counted in that 1000 views.

Our Organization Is Growing
Remember a week or two ago when I sent out the notice that we had reached our 100th member? Two things on that, that is NOW 119 members on the ALERT email list, we also have another 20-40 or so that receive only ICQ notices. We also have some members that receive the notices both ways. This is a very good idea. It makes it so easy to forward the notices on to your friends and contacts both email and ICQ lists.

One of the things that we all can do is whenever we hear of a newsletters, web sites, or anyone asking for suggestions for web sites recommend 4thekids. It works, we received a big jump in the number of hits to the web site the day that this came out plus added a few new members.

From: Bob Johnson's Computer Stuff <parts@bobjohnson.com>
To: Freebie Newsletter #5 parts@bobjohnson.com
Date: Friday, January 05, 2001 8:21 PM
Subject: Freebie and Contest Newsletter #5

PLEASE CHECK THIS SITE OUT

One of our readers, Dean Powers, sent me an e-mail about his site. There are thousands of missing children in our country. This website is dedicated to solving the problem. Please take a look at this not-for-profit site to see if you recognize any of the missing children. Sign up to receive e-mail alerts on any new missing children. Everyone's help is needed. Thank you!
https://members.tripod.com/Forthekids/

Need Help
I am in need of some help with a couple of things that I lack the ability to do. If anyone knows advanced web page design email me, I need a tracker written for our web page to track what pages are viewed when someone comes to our website. Also would love to have a counter that could keep track of the fliers that are viewed in email.

One last thing…. We are looking for nomination for HEROES 4thekids. If you know someone or even a group that helps children, missing or not we would love to hear about them. Email me at either webmaster@fourthekids.org or stump55@careful.com

PS You have no idea how happy we are that Joyce has taken over the newsletter, what a great job too!!!!

http://www.fourthekids.org

We have started to set up the new address. Both http://www.fourthekids.org and https://members.tripod.com/Forthekids/ will get you to our pages. We haven't set up with a provider but have a link at the fourthekids.org that will take you to the tripod pages.

Web Fliers

First off what is a web flier (WF)? It’s what we are now calling the missing kid posters that we make. When we take on a case we first do an intake. That is where we get all the details of a case ie Name of Child, Description, Case Information, Law Enforcement Contact N.C.I.C. number, After we check with LE, and get permission from the Custodial Parent (CP) to publish the missing child we make the WF. We have been using a couple of formats trying to determine which one works best, we are getting close to making up our minds. We are trying to get it formatted that when we input the details in the intake form, the text part of the WF is complete. We will also use this text data to post a notice to a couple of Newsgroups that deal with missing children. Oh and it is also listed on our Active Case Page. The Active Case page will be redone soon. So that it can be searched by state, description, exc. Need some input from anyone on if they should be displayed by importance, or on a first in last up way.

Some things to note are. We have added a check status link at the bottom of the flier. We did this because a lot of you have been going to the flier and emailing it out. It is a great way for people to promote a missing child WF, but has two drawbacks. One important and one while isn’t that big of deal right now may become important later on. We have no idea where the WF would be sent, so when it is cancelled it would be hard to get the word out. We are trying real hard to set it up so old WF's aren’t floating around the net for years after the child is found. That is why we have added the status click link, that way anyone that receives a WF can click on it and find the status.

Steps To Email A WF

1. Go to the WF that you wish to email to your friends, family, and contacts. Please be careful when sending out a WF. We NEVER  want anyone to feel that they were spammed.
2. Select File on the bar at the top of your browser, then select Send. Then fill in the email addresses. Most people will be able to use their address book by clicking on the To”

The other problem with having people email the WF is that we have no way to track the number of fliers that are being sent. The reason that this is kind of important is we want to see if we can find ways to get to better get the word out. We are also going to try to try to start targeting areas of the country where a child may be located.

FROM THE DESK OF THE EDITOR
JOYCE M. SCHULTZ

This is your newsletter and I will continue to try to make it interesting and informational to all the members.
If you have news, information, anything that you feel would be interesting, suggestions regarding the newsletter or questions you might have, please send it to me.
address: Joyce joyscrft@centuryTel.net

SITES FOR YOUR REFERENCE

Keep yourself informed - check often

4THEKIDS Email lists. To learn more please click HERE.

CASE INFORMATION

Click Here To View Active Case Page. Click on the NAME to view the Web Flier, or click on STATUS next to the name to goto the status page for that child to see if any additional information is available.

Lydia Strieby   Status
Andre Bosse   Status
Amanda Couvillon  Status
Megan Couvillon   Status
Sarai Gould   Status
Ariel Gould   Status
Amy Hoffer Status
Nadia Dabbagh   Status

Alert List
Parents
Information Sharing
Hero 4thekids
WF (Web Fliers)

CASE UPDATES

We have just received word from the family of Robert Williams, that he has been returned home.
Jessica, Mindi, Joshua, and Lacey Blevins have been reunited with their father.

WHAT’S NEW

In our quest for awareness of 4thekids, every opportunity and success is greeted with enthusiasm Dean and Patty are constantly looking for ways to getting the word out about who we are and what we do.

One area of concentration are the magazines such as Yahoo Life, Family PC, exerts to newspapers and TV stations. They are always looking for fillers for their pages on the Internet.

STAFF INFORMATION

Patty Beeken,
Executive Director
pbeeken@comweb.net
director@fourthekids.org

Dean Powers,
Case Manager/Web Master
missing@fourthekids.org
webmaster@fourthekids.org

Jerry Strahan
Asst. Case Manager/Team Leader Research and Investigation Team
jerrystrahan@webtv.net
jerry@fourthekids.org

Joyce M. Schultz
Newsletter Editor
joyscrft@centuryTel.net
editor@fourthekids.org

CONTACT INFORMATION

Email Web Master

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