Some lost between the cracks

So I called up Jimmy Hoffa — I was hopeful Elvis would be there to tell me how I might get in touch with Amelia Earhart. D.B. Cooper answered and said Amelia was hanging out with Butch Cassidy somewhere in Argentina, sharing a few laughs about all the fuss over their whereabouts.

Do I have your attention, yet? Good. Stay with me on this one.

I recently wrote an article that told one man's account of his group's efforts over the years to find Earhart's remains. After the story was published, one e-mail response after another trickled in. They all had different ideas about or additions to the Earhart mystery. A caller told me she had news about Earhart that would "blast" me out of my seat. (That didn't happen.)

But each person who responded was entertaining, at least, and even compelling to a degree. One said the Marines picked Earhart up in the Pacific. Another reader said that Earhart was a spy for the U.S. government. Depending on who you ask, Earhart either lived out her life in Florida or her remains are still on an island in the Pacific.

The troubling disparity here is that the average missing person today doesn't get near the attention that is heaped on famous or notorious people who suddenly disappear. There are exceptions, like Utah's own Elizabeth Smart, whose immediate and extended family knew how to work with the media to keep her abduction in the public eye. She was found, alive and well.

People love a good mystery, especially if it's got style, flash, a book or movie behind it, some kind of hook and, of course, a big name attached. Millions of dollars are spent on keeping these mysteries alive through the decades.

But what happens to those children and adults on the "Have you seen me?" cards we all get in the mail? How many abductions and disappearances simply come and go like so many ghosts in our daily lives?

Well, a lot.

The National Institute of Justice reported earlier this year that on any given day, there are as many as 100,000 "active" missing-persons cases in the United States. Some, of course, don't want to be found, and many turn up dead. The institute estimates that more than 40,000 sets of unidentified human remains are being held by medical examiners all over the country. Only about 6,000 of those cases are being tracked by the FBI.

Maybe, though, some group can help a still hopeful Darlene Pitts find her sister, missing for 14 years somewhere in Indiana, where it's estimated there are about 1,300 missing people, according to a story this month on www.IndyStar.com.