from our local Charlotte Observer:

Police search for missing 15-year-old girl

By Lindsay Ruebens
lruebens@charlotteobserver.com
Posted: Wednesday, Jul. 08, 2009

Police are looking for a 15-year-old girl who has been missing since last Thursday.

Tyra Porter was last seen leaving 1602 Dendy Lane in Charlotte around 1:30 p.m.

Police say she is 5-foot-2 and 95 pounds. Her family is concerned about her safety because of health issues.

Anyone with information can reach Detective A.L. Hart at 704-336-4196. Police ask anyone who has seen Porter or knows of her whereabouts to call 911.

Below are some alarming statistics from the Center to Prevent Lost Children, based out of Boston. http://www.preventinglostchildren.org/

Over 2000 U.S. kids get lost every day.¹

Less than 10% are reported to any authority.²

Approximately 100 U.S. kids are stereotypically kidnapped by strangers each year.¹

90% of families will experience losing a child in a public place.

• 20% have lost a child more than once.²

7 out of 10 kids get lost at least once in their lives.²

95% will forever remember the trauma of getting lost.²

Parents rank losing a child 5 times more concerning to them than terrorism and 3 times more concerning than abduction.²

Kids get lost most often in malls and stores (45%)²

27% of families that visit an amusement park lose a child while they are there.³

Only 9% of parents put some form of safe ID on their children.²

76% of parents want to know what to do to prevent a child from getting lost.²

Sources:
1: Source = NISMART2: National Incident Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway and Thrownaway Children. U.S. Department of Justice. October 2002.
2: Source = Wander Wear Inc. parent survey, September 2006.
3: Source = IntiMetrix study, 2002.

For the 76% of parents who want to know what to do to prevent their child from getting lost I say look no further than the sentryGPSid personal location device!  It’s the smallest, most intelligent, and most cost effective GPS tracking device and web portal combination on the market today.  With the sentryGPSid you can know before your loved one wanders!

Sentry Technologies has been a leader in innovation for protecting our loved ones for a long time, and now they take another step way past what any of the other GPS personal location device companies on the market come even close to providing.  The power of polygonal geofencing.  Some companies provide radial geofencing, giving you the ability to draw large or small circles that usually encompass way more geographic area than you truly want to encircle.  Now with the SentryGPS web portal you can draw geofences that cover your desired area much more precisely than ever before.  Take the three examples below:

Local Neighborhood Geofence

The first geofence example I’ll present to you is that of a very tightly defined local area where a loved one may travel within his or her own neighborhood.  For an adult with Alzheimer’s or other form of dementia, this may be their daily route to walk or ride their bike around the neighborhood.  Or maybe it is a child’s route to school, and also encircling the block the school is located on.  The sentryGPSid is the first GPS personal location device that can give you this precise of control of your geofence on any level, and the benefits on the local level are clear.

Geofencing for long distance travels

Another example for using polygonal geofencing is that of long distance traveling.  The SentryGPS web portal allows you to create a geofence that will monitor your loved one’s GPS device whether they are traveling on vacation, work, or going back to college.   Whether they are traveling one hour, four hours or 14 hours, the SentryGPS web portal gives you the ability to highlight their actual travel path so you can know right away if they take a detour from their normal course.  Looking at the example to the right, imagine how large of an area would be covered by a radial geofence.  Over 95% of the area covered by a radial geofence encompassing both end points would be outside of the true travel path.

Geofences for traveling into town.

Maybe the first two examples don’t pertain exactly to your every day needs for a GPS location device.  Maybe you need a way to track your loved one on their daily commute while traveling from their home to either work, or school, or just into town.  Maybe your loved one lives in a long term care facility, yet travels into town for work every day.  The example to your left shows you how you can highlight that daily travel path on a local level, and encompass larger areas on both ends.

How fast is one mile per minute?  Well the obvious answer is 60 miles per hour, but let’s look at a graphical representation of exactly how fast 1 mile per minute really is:

A Missing Child Can Disappear At 1 Mile Per Minute

Click on the image for a larger version and you will see 12 concentric circles based around Lincoln, Nebraska.  The inner most circle represents just how far a missing child can disappear in 1 hour.  Each additional circle represents an additional hour, with the outer most circle representing only 12 hours.   That’s 720 miles.

Even 1 mile is well out of the range of any RFID based child location system on the market today, in fact most of them do not even have a range of more than 600 feet – that’s just 2 football fields.  At 1 mile (5280 feet) a minute (60 seconds), a missing child could be out of range of any of these RFID based child location systems in just 8.8 seconds (5280 feet / 60 seconds).  So within 10 seconds of your child going missing he or she could be well outside of the range of any RFID based child location system.  Just 10 seconds.  And that means there’s not even an indication of which direction to start searching.

That’s why a GPS child locator is so much more effective in locating a missing child than an RFID based system.  The sentryGPSid child locator is not a locally based system with a limited range.  It has the ability to locate a missing child anywhere in the world, through any internet connected computer.  As long as the sentryGPSid can pick up a cellular signal in order to broadcast it’s location back up to our webportal.

Additionally, not only does the sentryGPSid allow you to locate your device anywhere a cellular signal can be obtained, our geofencing technology also lets you know BEFORE your child goes missing by sending you customized alerts as soon as your child leaves their predefined safe zones.  You can also send a text message to your device at any time and it will respond back it’s exact location as well as a link to a map which will show you it’s exact position.

SentryKIDS, protecting children for over 15 years!

SentryKIDS® pioneered the digital child ID and child fingerprinting market over 15 years ago, and we continue to be lead the industry in quality, innovation, professionalism and value. With a SentryKIDS® FingerTIPS™ child ID and child fingerprinting system you can take fast, clean, digital fingerprints in a fraction of the time it takes to use the ink & paper method – and there is no messy cleanup either!

Now Sentry Technologies, the company behind the SentryKIDS® digital child fingerprinting software, is offering the most proactive approach at protecting children from wandering or getting lost  – and we are doing it at the most economical price point with more features than anyone else!

sentryGPSid GPS personal location device

The sentryGPSid™ is the smallest, most intelligent and most affordable GPS personal location device on the market today.  Bar none.   The sentryGPSid™ has the ability to alert a parent that their child is wandering BEFORE they go missing, and in the event of the unthinkable, the sentryGPSid™ provides parents a way to track their child’s GPS device in real time through our industry leading GPS tracking web portal.

At a price of just $185 for the device, and a $19/month service fee, the sentryGPSid™ is hands-down the most affordable GPS child location device available today.   Other providers will charge almost 3 times that amount for their GPS child location devices and services – and they don’t provide any additional features, while some even want to charge parents more for features we include with our GPS tracking web portal!

Talk To Your Children Today!

• Be proactive by assuming that your child could be a victim.
• Talk to your child about how they can keep themselves safe.  This is the only way they will know what to do when confronted by an unwanted situation.
• Teach you child how to dial “911” or “0” on the telephone and call for help.
• Teach your child their full name, address and telephone number as early as possible.
• Let you child know that the people that could help them if they were lost or separated from you are policemen, mothers with children, cashiers, the mailman or store clerks.  Teach your child how to recognize each of these at places you frequently take your children.
• When you go to public places, especially amusement parks, wear the same colors as your children.  This will make it much simpler to inform police or security guards of your children’s attire in the event of an emergency. Pay particular attention to your child’s shoes in these situations. Many times a kidnapper can change their shirt or pants, but their shoes are harder to switch.
• If you have a cell phone with a camera, take a picture of your children before every trip into a public place.  This gives you the most current picture possible, and helps to remind you of what your children are wearing that day.
• Do NOT put your child’s name on the outside of their clothing or school supplies or backpacks, this is an easy way for a stranger to know your child’s name and approach them like a friend of the family.
• Teach you child that adults do not ask children for directions or help finding an animal.  They should say “NO” and run and tell an adult they trust.
• Teach your child that a stranger is anyone they do not know.
• Teach you child that their body belongs to them and that no one should touch them where their bathing suite covers and that it is OK for parents to touch only when they are bathing them or applying medicine.
• Teach you child that it’s OK to say “NO” to an adult they do not know.
• Establish a family “code word” and teach them they should never go with anyone that doesn’t know the family “code word”.
• Maintain a strict procedure for who picks up your child from day care or school.  Be consistent.
• Teach you child that if an adult or older child makes them feel uncomfortable they should say “NO” or yell “HELP” not just scream and try to get away.
• Listen to your children.  Encourage them not to keep secrets from you.
• Promote your child’s self-esteem and let tem know that you love them for who they are, and they can talk to you about anything.
• Keep all your doors and windows locked and have your home well lighted.
• Teach your child to enjoy wearing the sentryGPSid™ child GPS location device.
• Keep your child’s sentryGPSid™ GPS device charged and make certain to put it in their pocket or on their belt when they leave the house.
• Keep your SentryKIDS® Bio-Doc™ in a convenient location in your home.  Do not put your child’s Bio-Doc™ in a safety deposit box where you do not have 24-hr. access.  Store it in a fireproof safe if you have one.  If you do not have a fireproof safe, put your child’s Bio-Doc™ in a zip lock bag and store it in the freezer.  Your freezer will protect your valuable documents since it is heavily insulated.