Company Helps Protect Children

LAREDO (Monday, October 03, 2005) - The border areas crime wave combined with parental paranoia is what drove Laredoans
Sylvia Flores and Peter Lozano into business.
Guard A Kid, at 702 South Zapata Highway inside Amco Insurance, is a new business
that provides kits for parents to have on hand in case their child turns up missing.
"I have three children, and I wouldn't want anything to happen to any of them," Flores
says. "Guard A Kid is a system I thought was far better than anything else out there, and I
thought it needed to be done."
Complete system
Equipped with a laptop computer, a printer, a digital camera and a digital fingerprint
scanning machine, the Guard A Kid system is used to collect a child's photo, fingerprints
and vital information such as height, weight, hair color, identifying marks and medical
information, which are printed out on hard copy and stored on a CD-ROM.
The CD-ROM contains ten digital fingerprint images and a color photo. Parents are given
two laminated wallet-size IDs containing the child's color photo, thumbprint image and
complete physical and emergency information.
Both the printout and the disk are given to parents who can give them to local authorities
if their child comes up missing.
Flores says the child ID package, which costs $15 per child, can be used by schools,
police forces, PTA groups and other organizations to provide identification services in
classrooms or community events.
"Any organization that has anything to do with children can benefit from this system,"
Flores said.
Her business partner, Peter Lozano, supported Flores in her idea.
"This identification system is highly recommended by the FBI and urged by law
enforcement agencies for parents to keep critical information of their child at their
fingerprints should an unfortunate event of a missing child occur," he said.
According to the Guard A Kid Web site, a child in the United States becomes missing
every 40 seconds, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
The Web site also states that the FBI receives more than 2,000 missing children reports
every day. Statistics from the U.S. Justice Department and The World Almanac put the
chance of your child becoming missing a 1 in 42.
"Having your child's information with you at all times provides you with peace of mind
and that is why law enforcement recommends parents to keep an up to date child's ID
card in case of an emergency," Flores stressed.
For more information or to have the package introduced personally, call Guard A Kid, at
(956) 725-2400 or visit www.guardakid.com.
(Mayra Flores may be reached at 728-2547 or by e-mail at mayra@lmtonline.com)

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