Before someone is missing

Milford, Pa. — When a child hasn't gotten off the school bus or an elderly parent doesn't answer the phone or a pet goes missing, worried family members face an extremely stressful time. Often people don't know what to do.

But a local entrepreneur has come up with an idea. Before the missing person or pet has been absent long enough to qualify for an official police intervention, families can get quickly involved in trying to locate their child, parent or pet.

Jerry Kriescher, a Pike County, Pa., resident who has been married 36 years and is the father of five, has thought about this a lot. Last year, with the help of his son and other family members, he started Family Search Alert (FSA), a small business designed to help people find missing family members, for a fee.

He's quick to point out that his business offers families a “communication tool” and he says his service should always be used in conjunction with notifying the proper authorities in cases where there is any suspected danger to those missing.

Here's how it works. When the need arises, Family Search Alert (www.familysearchalert.com) will set up a list of contacts, maintain a flyer (with a text box to update information that changes such as what they were last seen wearing or where they were last seen), and offer its clients — the anxious family — flexible scenarios of who and when the contacts should be notified.

With their “Yellow Alert” scenario, a list of people identified os emergency contacts will be notified (in a manner they choose – e-mail, phone, text, etc) and an update can be made to the missing person's Facebook and Twitter accounts. This would be for the times when someone is missing but it is not of a concern enough to contact the police. (Typically, the person is suspected of just having gone somewhere without mentioning it — like a movie or an athletic practice).

Family Search Alert's “Red Alert” would contact everyone, send out Facebook and Twitter messages, and offer links to a flyer that will have all the pertinent information and an updated photo of the missing person.

Working with law enforcement Kreischer is working on contacting local law enforcement departments to make sure the flyers meet their criteria. As it stands now, people can call police and give them the company Web site and a pass code. From there, police can pull up the flyer and information on the missing person.

This can relieve some of the stress in a missing person case, Kreischer says.

Kreicher sees this business growing nationwide and perhaps internationally into Canada. Eventually.

His next step is to get the word out. But a marketing campaign can be serious money to any small business. To this end, he has enlisted the use of "crowdfunding" Web sites that help build revenue by offering special incentives, such as memberships in his company, to small investors.

He's hoping to raise $50,000 through small investments made to his business at the indiegogo Web site. As of last week, he'd raised $250. His fundraising campaign on the site ends Sept. 12. To contribute or see his plan, visit indiegogo.com/FSA.

—Charles Reynolds