A report that 21 young people are officially on the record book of law-enforcement agencies in Collier and Lee counties as missing came as a shock.Memorial Day also was National Missing Children’s Day. With the story were photos of 18 of the 21 faces. They range in age from infants, such as Bryan Dos Santos-Gomez, the Baby Bryan who made headlines by being reported abducted by a knife-wielding stranger before Christmas 2006 in Fort Myers, to 6-year-old Adji Desir, who disappeared in Immokalee in January, to Wendy Hudakoc, who snuck out of the house for a party before Thanksgiving 1998 at the age of 14 and was never seen again.
The community, whether that means Southwest Florida or the whole state, or the nation and world, also can use a more uniformed, systematic approach to public notification of a missing child. We have to make sure we do everything we can. Citizens are eager to help if they know who to look for and what to do.
Locally, we can work to make sure Southwest Florida does not get a reputation as a safe haven for predators. We cannot let the memories of our most precious resource stolen from our midst grow fuzzy over time. We have to keep that in focus.




