
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, September 6, 1994                   TAG: 9409060027
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-5   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: New River Valley bureau
DATELINE: DUBLIN                                 LENGTH: Medium

COMFORT INN DOING ITS PART TO HELP LOCATE MISSING KIDS

Photos and information on missing children are being shown regularly at the Dublin Comfort Inn as part of a new project to find and recover them.

The Comfort Inn and its franchiser, Choice Hotels International, began this first-of-a-kind effort in cooperation with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. A video will be available in lobby and breakfast areas and on room movie preview channels.

Guests at 2,400 Comfort Inn, Econo Lodge, Quality, Friendship, Rodeway, Sleep and Clarion motels throughout the country will be able to see the video. It will be updated monthly and distributed to Choice Hotels International facilities.

Photos of missing children will run 24 hours a day. Guests who recognize a face can call the National Center toll-free at 1-800-THE-LOST.

``One in seven missing children in this country is recovered as a result of ordinary people recognizing a child's photograph,'' said John Stone, Dublin Comfort Inn general manager. ``By putting these photographs on TV in the lobby, we hope to find some of these children.''

The video is introduced by John Walsh, host of Fox-TV's ``America's Most Wanted'' and a member of the National Center board.

Walsh was running a hotel in Florida when his 6-year-old son Adam was abducted and murdered in 1981. Walsh and his wife, Reve, testified before congressional committees and legislatures in 47 states for tougher, more uniform laws on crimes involving children.

Their efforts helped secure passage of the Missing Children's Assistance Act of 1984, which created the National Center. The center is a nonprofit corporation working in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Justice as a national center dealing with child abduction and exploitation matters.

Choice Hotels International has worked with the center before. In the mid-1980s, its hotels posted photographs of missing children in lobbies and began providing free lodging for families traveling to reunite with recovered children.

``Anything we can do to make it more difficult for kidnappers will help protect our children,'' Stone said.

by CNB