DAVIS COUNTY — It may take a village to raise a child, but sometimes it takes an entire nation to bring one home.

The Davis Chamber of Commerce’s Women in Business Professional Leadership Committee presented Paul Murphy, Utah’s AMBER Alert coordinator, with a $5,000 donation at a luncheon held late last week at the Davis Conference Center. Elaine Runyon-Simmons, Ed and Elizabeth Smart were also on hand to emphasize the importance of the AMBER Alert System, a nationwide program that spreads information about abducted children to help bring them home.

“Every day there are new miracles that happen because of the AMBER Alert,” said Murphy. Since first becoming a national program in October 2002, the alert has helped save the lives of 426 children.

It also relies on the help of donations to keep running. “After six years, the state budget for the program is still $0,” added Murphy.

In Utah, the program actually began as the Rachael Alert system, named in honor of Rachael Marie Runyon. The three-year-old Sunset girl was kidnapped and killed in 1982, which inspired her mother Elaine to help begin a system that would alert the community about an abducted child so that everyone could help join in the search.

Utah first adopted the Rachel Alert in early 2002, and Elizabeth Smart’s kidnapping was the first state case to utilize the alert.

“I’m glad that the world took notice because of the Elizabeth Smart case,” said John Walsh, in a special AMBER Alert video shown at the luncheon. The state changed the Rachel Alert to the Amber Alert in early 2003 to avoid confusion. “It helped make everyone more aware of how vulnerable our children really are.”

Ed Smart, who had not heard of the Rachael Alert before his daughter was kidnapped, later lobbied to get the AMBER Alert passed nationally.

“The AMBER Alert is all about awareness,” he said. “It’s because of awareness that Elizabeth came home.”

There are four criteria that a case must meet before law enforcement are willing to issue an AMBER Alert, including whether the child is age 17 or younger, whether there is evidence that the child has been taken, whether there is reason to believe the child will be facing serious bodily harm or death, and whether there is information that could be released to the public (description of a vehicle, etc.) that would help assist in the search for the child.

After an AMBER Alert has been issued, word goes out onto television stations, highway and other electronic signs, and a variety of other media including cell phone alerts. To sign up to be part of the cell phone alert list, please visit www.wirelessamberalerts.org.

For cases that don’t specifically meet these four criteria, Utah has also set up an Endangered Person Advisory that can be issued in cases where the person is either older than 17 or there is no proof that they’ve been taken. It was an Endangered Person Advisory in Missouri, inspired by the one in Utah, that found Ben Oenby and Shawn Hornbeck in early 2007.

“To this day I’m still amazed at everything that goes on when a child is missing,” said Elizabeth Smart, currently a music major down at BYU. “I don’t think there’s anything more important than protecting a child.”

jwardell@davisclipper.com