The Fight Against Crime: Notes From the Battlefront : Tapping Into an Ounce of Prevention

It would be impossible not to see the tragedy in the kidnaping and murder of 7-year-old Leticia Hernandez, who was abducted near her home in 1990 in Oceanside.

But marketing consultant Doug Sebastian also saw an opportunity in the situation. The notoriety of the case in Southern California could be a springboard, he thought, for educating children and their families about the dangers of abductions. It could also be the start of a new business.

That business, Kindervision, paid a visit to the Promenade Mall at Woodland Hills last weekend. At a series of booths in the center court of the upscale mall, just down from I. Magnin and Saks Fifth Avenue, parents picked up educational materials about the prevention of abductions. They also could have their children fingerprinted and videotaped.

“It becomes part of the records parents keep on their children at home, in case it is ever needed,� said Sebastian, 42.

Sebastian, who lives in the San Diego area, helped organize a reward fund at the time of the Hernandez abduction. He realized then that abduction prevention could be marketed like any other commodity. Kindervision, which he founded in 1991 with his wife, Ashby, now takes up about 80% of his marketing business, he estimated.

“It is a business and it’s a good business to be in--helping to protect children,� he said.

Dressed in a turquoise polo shirt inscribed with the Kindervision logo, he looked around at the steady stream of parents leading their children into the palm tree-lined, marble-floored area for their turn at the fingerprinting table.

“This is a great venue,� he said.

The kids especially took to the video area, where they grabbed the microphone like the MTV generation that they are. They had fun on camera talking to the personable, teen-age members of the Los Angeles Police Department Explorer Scouts, who were staffing the booth as volunteers.

At the end of the kids’ stints before the camera, the scouts made sure that they turned left and right so both profiles could be clearly seen. All this took place in front of a banner promoting Chrysler, the company that picked up the tab for the event.

In the unlikely event any of these tapes did have to be viewed as the result of an abduction, the frantic parents would be stuck with an image of their child in front of a car logo.

Bill Shean, California marketing executive for Chrysler, certainly didn’t see it in that light. “We promote safety with our products, so it seemed like a logical tie into what we do and like a way to give something back to the community,� he said.

Out in the community, however, the incidence of the kind of child abduction toward which the Kindervision program is aimed is extremely low. Studies have shown that nearly 99% of child abduction cases are the result of parental custody disputes.

Indeed, Sebastian said he had not heard of any of the 150,000 fingerprint/video records Kindervision had made so far being used to help locate a missing child.

But he ardently defended Kindervision’s educational materials, including a video message that is included on the tape the parent gets of the child. It instructs children to avoid potentially dangerous situations.

“The materials about the fingerprinting and videotaping might be what brings them in here,� Sebastian said, “but the educational part is the most important.�

No matter what brought them to the Kindervision display, parents seemed happy the service was being provided.

“I know there is not much chance of anything happening like what they are talking about,� said Jan Kolon of Woodland Hills, who was there with her lively daughter, Alissa, 4.

“But,� she added, “you don’t want to be that one in a million.

“Every time I go into a department store with her and she runs to hide under the clothes, it’s the first thing I think of.�

Several other parents agreed that the rarity of abductions by strangers was of little comfort.

“The incidence of carjacking is very small,� said Neal Adelman, who was there from Tarzana with his daughter, Kelly, 4. “But everyone in Los Angeles thinks about it and is worried it might happen to them.�