Corey mentioned later in the article...
Kids welcome lifesaving junk mail -
Missing-children effort marks 20th anniversary
Record, The (Hackensack, NJ)
February 20, 2005
Author: By WALTER DAWKINS, STAFF WRITER
Estimated printed pages: 3
It was during a weekend visit that Steve Fastow took off with his 10-year-old son, Sam.
"It's not right. You're taking a kid away from their family and their friends," said Sam Fastow, now 17. "He was teaching me how to lie and he was making my whole life a lie."
After leaving Sam's home in Hamburg, Sussex County, in July 1997, the pair crisscrossed the continent, first going to Canada, then California, before finally ending up in Texas.
Abby Potash, who had legal custody of her son, didn't know what to do.
"He was impossible to track because he wasn't using his real name, he had false identification for himself and Sam, and he wasn't using any credit cards," Potash said of her ex-husband, who had emptied his son's $40,000 college fund.
Then Sam was featured in the "Have You Seen Me?" card program, which posts pictures of missing children and an 800 phone number for any tips that may lead to their recovery on blue and white cards that end up amid your junk mail.
In March 1998, Potash got a call from police. Someone had spotted Sam after seeing the card, and he was recovered in Alvin, Texas.
"I felt like I was getting a second chance on life and it was the most wonderful day of my life," said Potash. "It's a lifesaving program."
Established by the targeted advertising company ADVO and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) two decades ago, the "Have You Seen Me?" cards are mailed out to as many as 85 million households each week.
They've become an effective tool: To date, 131 children have been recovered, a success rate of about one in seven.
"It puts a photograph into the hands of millions and millions of Americans," said Vince Giuliano, ADVO's senior vice president of government relations. "Picture programs are the most powerful tool for law enforcement to get leads to recover children. They are the hope for searching parents."
For the 20th anniversary of the program, ADVO is targeting its cards to areas where law enforcement officials believe a child is located.
Among those featured in the new approach is Corey Edkin, who may be in North Jersey. Corey, who would now be 20 years old, went missing from his New Columbia, Pa., home in 1986. Last month, his card, which also included an age-progressed image of how he might have looked at age 17, was distributed to 4.5 million households in the Northeast.
"We're just trying to bring this case back to life again," said Charles Pickett, Corey's case manager at NCMEC. "We just know that there is somebody out there who can help us bring resolve to this case. We don't ever let a case die."
"About three years ago, we did our first age-progression picture with Corey and we got a lot of responses, but they all turned up negative," said Pennsylvania state Trooper Philip Davis, the investigating officer on Corey's case. "We've exhausted our investigation, so we need some outside help."
But unless people really take a good look at the picture, the program doesn't work.
Toward this end, ADVO has introduced the "Take a Closer Look" initiative, which offers tips to help people better remember the photos, focusing on the features that don't change, such as the eyes and mouth.
"I tell people to put themselves in the position as if that were their child that was missing," said ADVO's Jeanne Boylan, a facial identification specialist. "And when people pull that card out of the mail and just toss it away as junk mail, imagine how heartbreaking that would be for the parent, because somebody is going to be crossing paths with that child."
ADVO employees came up with the idea for the cards after they saw the 1984 television movie "Adam," about an abducted child who is murdered.
"Now, we've made it part of our doing business," said Giuliano. "We don't send out any of our mailings without information about a missing child."
Giuliano finds it difficult to describe the feeling of helping to find the children.
"It's very, very special," he said. "I have met most of the children that we have recovered. One time, a little girl came to me and put her arms around my legs and said, 'Thank you for bringing me home to my daddy.'-"
Sam Fastow, for one, feels extremely fortunate to have been featured on the "Have You Seen Me?" card.
"It's an amazing program," he said. "All people need to do is look at a picture and they could be somebody's hero and save their life."
