The Controversial Missing Children Milk Carton Program

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My mom went missing when she was 3 for two days. Everybody searched for her, my grandmother unable to eat or sleep because she was so panicked over her missing daughter. Turns out my mom was staying in an orange grove, eating oranges with a random stray dog to keep her company. She said the dog was so friendly that he let her use him as a pillow when she slept at night. She walked to the orange grove down the road while my grandmother was busy at the laundromat and decided she liked it so much she stayed there for awhile. Then when she was done, she walked back home (it was a couple of blocks away). The cops were talking to my grandmother in the house when they heard the back door open and saw my mom walking into the kitchen to ask for a drink.

When I was a kid, my mom would just scar me with stories about women going missing in her hometown in Mexico. Then she would make it worse by pointing at a random person in public and would say “if you don’t behave, they’re gonna take you like they did them.” And it would scare the hell out of me. Thanks Mom.

“Don’t talk to weird people…” I accidentally became the stranger in Stranger Danger scenarios. A kid in my neighborhood had a kitten. I love cats, so I struck up a conversation with her about her kitten. It was only when I saw the nervous look on the kid’s face that I realized, “Oh, crap!” and politely and slowly booked it back home.

I was part of the "stranger danger" generation. We all lived under the impression that someday we were going to have to run from kidnappers. The crazy part is, we were still mostly unsupervised. Our parents had no clue where we were

The worst part about the Bonnie case is that it completely goes against the whole “stranger danger” aspect of the missing children. Bonnie wasn’t kidnapped by a stranger, but by her own mother. Not even the one milk carton success story lines up with the expectations set by it.

'The missing kid who ate breakfast with them every day' is a very powerful line.

This reminded me of something from my childhood. My birth mother had a plan to kidnap me and my brother from school when we were kids. Our parents were divorced, we were super young, and she was our mom, so if the police hadn’t been called by our aunt, we definitely would have gotten in with her and rode across state lines. We have an older sister by the same mom who grew up with her as her primary parent. My sister and all of her friends were pimped out and strategically given drugs by our mom when they were only in high school. That was a pattern throughout her side of the family, bc if you’re a dealer, you can hook your kids at an early age and have built in clients. I am extraordinarily lucky, bc the court was really trying to give her custody since my dad wasn’t actually biologically related to me. He did get custody though, of all three of us. My sister is sober and a lot better mentally. She has kids of her own, and doesn’t plan on telling them until their late teens or adulthood that we have this secret first mother and entire family line that we were all rescued from.

As a CPS worker the runaway photos are still used and distributed and it’s exceptionally helpful because it convinces youth to return home. Runaway youth are very susceptible to sex/human/drug trafficking and getting them home is a big win in avoiding that. I had a youth run away from her grandmother and ended up with fake documents in Puerto Rico at 14

I remember hearing about a little girl being kidnapped. These 12-14 year old boys decided to ride their bikes around their neighborhood. One actually found her & literally chased the car on his bike far enough they shoved her out to him. She wouldn't let go of the boy until her parents got there. He had to sit in the ambulance with her. The boys & especially that boy were true heroes that day.

My parents used to tell me that if I didn't drink all my milk at breakfast I would be in greater danger of potential abduction. As a kid this sounded sort of crazy. But all these decades later, having always finished my glass of milk as a child, I can attest to the fact that I was never abducted. Thanks mom and dad for the sound advice. Sorry I doubted you.

As a child I was kidnapped and according to my dad (because was too young to remember), it was the neighbor who saw my missing child poster and called the police once they were certain it was me! Apparently the neighbor called a few times because the police were not taking it seriously but thankfully the neighbor was persistent.

I found an abandoned house years ago in the middle of the woods somewhere in Pennsylvania that had hundreds of these milk cartons all over the house with all of the kids eyes poked out. Weirdest thing I’ve ever found

I remember watching a video years ago that tested if missing kid posters did anything at all. They posted a picture of a girl in front of a mall with a big ol' "MISSING" on it, then put the girl on a bench in the busiest part of the mall. She sat there for a long time, all by herself. Nobody recognized her as the "missing" kid. Nobody really even paid attention to her.

It's depressing that Jonny Gosch (the first child talked about here) went missing on the first day that he decided he didn't need his father to supervise him, as well as the Etan Patz abduction being on the first day he went to the bus stop alone.

This will definitely be buried, but my uncle was actually friends with Johnny Gosch. He said that seeing him on milk cartons was surreal but he didn't feel that it would really help anyone find him. He also said this Johnny's mom was definitely protective of him, but he didn't feel that she would make up a story about Johnny coming back to see her. Was also a bit weird because my uncle also worked as a paperboy for a short time and there really wasn't much of a response from their company about the kidnapping, operations just continued which definitely contributed to Eugene's kidnapping. This whole story is crazy to me, especially because of how close to home it is. I drive by the street where Johnny got taken every day and quite literally live less than a mile away from where it took place, so there's plenty of people in my community who were around and can tell me and have told me first hand how crazy this case was.

My aunt was abducted back in the late 60s by someone who was arrested years later for another crime. She was an adult, early 20s, but she was cognitively disabled and quite small, so she appeared as a pre-teen at best. She was kept for three days suffering some truly awful things until she was able to escape and walk and takes busses the 40 miles home. They obviously didn't find the guy at that time. Between the milk cartons and my mother's absolute fear of it happening to me, including telling me that story when I was like, 10 years old, I was so sure I'd be abducted as a kid. It was a weird upbringing.

imagine asking to put your missing dad on a milk carton after he said he’s going to get milk but never came back

I am currently 28 years old. When I was 6-8yrs old, a man I had never seen before approached me at a place I was familiar with and said my parents were looking for me. He offered to drive me back to my parents. Even being a child, I still said "no I'll ride my bike back home." After years(almost 10 yrs) of not thinking anything of that incident, I told my mother. She cried. Never would she ask for a stranger to pick me up. I think back to that moment often. I joke now, but I could've been another one of these children. Missing forever.

It’s absolutely terrifying how so many of these children were kidnapped so close to their homes during every day life.