To prevent abductions, education is key

The people who would want to abduct or harm children have gotten pretty smart, but Ahwatukee Foothills resident Jose Villa offers a program that strives to outsmart them.

Child Shield U.S.A. is the only missing child prevention and emergency response program to receive the National Parenting Center Award.

Villa has been in the security industry for nearly 20 years, and recently decided to go out on his own and do something a little different. By the end of the year, he hopes to launch his company, Halo Protective Services.

Currently doing contract security for special events and working part time at the Phoenix Public Library downtown, Villa said he sees a lot of kids going unsupervised.

"Parents think it's a safe place. People drop off their kids here and we're a baby sitter for six hours," Villa said. "Education is not there for the parents."

Education is one of the main reasons Villa decided to provide Child Shield U.S.A. for the Valley.

The Child Shield U.S.A. program is two-fold: the first provides parents with educational materials to help them talk to their children about strangers and what to do if someone tries to abduct them.

"What I tell the parents is: the fingerprint cards, the DNA, the other products are not a proactive stance, they're reactive," Villa said. "All that does is actually match up a card with a body. What does it do to prevent and find your child?"

For the kids, the kit comes with a "Guide to Safer Children," which teaches ways to reduce a child's risk of becoming lost or missing, a "Play it Safe" coloring book that makes learning about safety interactive, the "Safety Seven" poster, which can be hung in a bedroom or playroom to be a constant reminder of the seven rules for safety.

For adults, Child Shield U.S.A. helps parents record an identification video of their child and provide secret identification code labels and a pre-addressed mailer so the video can anonymously be added to the Child Shield database. Parents also receive literature on what to do if their child goes missing.

Villa said he already enrolled his two children, ages 9 and 13.

If a child does go missing, the second part of Child Shield U.S.A. goes into effect. As soon as a parent activates the recovery service, the program immediately posts a $50,000 reward, duplicates and distributes the identification video and color posters to more than 16,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide, and an all-expenses paid professional private investigator will be on the scene in about four hours.

Since its inception in 1990, Child Shield U.S.A. has been activated twice, and both times the child was recovered. Cost for the service is a one-time enrollment fee of $99, plus $15 per month or a once-annual fee of $150. For more information, call Villa at (602) 400-7504, e-mail him at jose.villa@haloprotectiveservices.com, or visit www.childshieldusa.com/halo.