Jacob Wetterling Resource Center Hits 25 Year Milestone
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – Jacob Wetterling's family would be celebrating his 37th birthday on Tuesday.
In October of 1989, Wetterling was biking with a brother and his friend near his home in St. Joseph. He never returned home.
Months after his abduction, a foundation was created to help families of missing or exploited children. Along with Jacob's birthday, that foundation will celebrate its 25th anniversary on Tuesday.
"Birthdays are hard for me," Jacob's mother Patty said. "We should be planning a party with balloons and cake and ice cream and friends and celebrating, and it's always tough one for me."
Instead of celebrating Jacob's 37th birthday, Patty Wetterling will reflect, and hope. She says stories of missing children returned to their parents years after they were abducted are encouraging and inspiring.
"I never want to look Jacob in the eye and say- 'you know, I wanted to keep going but I got tired. It was so long.' We never quit. Ever," Wetterling said.
During the early stages of the search for their son, a foundation that would become the "Jacob Wetterling Resource Center" was established.
"Our first big fundraiser at the Jacob Wetterling Resource Center was for a brand new invention called a fax machine," program manager Alison Feigh said. "That was what we were going to use to get Jacob's picture out to law enforcement agencies in different cities."
As it celebrates 25 years, the resource center is now helping about 40 to 60 families of missing people annually.
The foundation, which runs primarily on donations, also train about 7,000 people a year in child abduction prevention.
Patty Wetterling said technology has also made a world of difference -- it was a simple fax machine in the foundation's early days. Today, there are iPhones, social media, Amber Alerts, and even billboards.
In the early 90s, the success rate for finding a missing child was about 61 percent. Today, it's about 97 percent.
"We should build a world that's safe for our children. You can't teach a 4-year-old how to avoid an abductor. It's just not fair. It's not their job. It's our job to protect them," Patty Wetterling said.
Wetterling says law enforcement agencies have done a better job over the past 25 years of working together on these cases.
Amber Alert was established in 2002. Since then, every child whose name has been issued in an Amber Alert in Minnesota has been found.
