Search for Adji: Birthday sparks national flier plan to find 7-year-old

Adji Desir Missing Child

SEARCH FOR ADJI DESIR

Adji Desir has been missing from Immokalee since Saturday evening, Jan. 10, 2009.

• INTERACTIVE MAP: Help edit map and add your suggestions to the search for Adji Desir
• INTERACTIVE TIMELINE: Timeline of events of the search for Adji Desir
• VIDEO: RAW VIDEO: Officials search water for Adji
• VIDEO: Interview with Adji Desir's parents
• VIDEO: CCSO gives update about Adji search
• VIDEO: CCSO's morning update on Adji
• VIDEO: CCSO Search Update: Adji Desir
• VIDEO: Search for Adji Desir Continues
• PHOTO GALLERY: Day 6: Officials search waters of Lake Traffor
• PHOTO GALLERY: Day 4: Search for Adji Desir continues
• PHOTO GALLERY: Day 3: Search for Adji Desir continues
• PHOTO GALLERY: Day 2: Search for 6-year-old Adji Desir
• AUDIO: Kevin Rambosk gives update about missing child (.mp3)
• AUDIO: Jamie Mosbach with the Collier County Sheriff's Office gives an update on the search for Adji Desir (.mp3)
• AUDIO: Lt. Smith with the Collier County Sheriff's Office on the search for Adji Desir (.mp3)
• AUDIO: Karie Partington talks about how people can help distribute flyers (.wma)
• AUDIO: Karie Partington talks about expanding search area (.wma)
• AUDIO: Kevin Rambosk holds press conference about missing child (.wma)
• DOCUMENT: Read transcript of Daily News editor discussing Adji’s disappearance on CNN Tuesday night
• DOCUMENT: Read transcript of Collier Sheriff's Office discussing missing child case on CNN Monday night
• POLL: Do you have an identification kit for your child?
• STORIES: Read stories about the search for 6-year-old Adji Desir
• COMPLETE COVERAGE: Special section about the search for Adji Desir

Tips have nearly dried up.

But in the ongoing search for Adji Desir, Collier County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Ken Becker said hope remains for bringing home the missing Immokalee boy.

The breakthroughs in the Jaycee Dugard, Shawn Hornbeck and Elizabeth Smart cases in the last few years are proof.

“It’s just further evidence that there’s still hope out there that even long-term missing children can be reunited with their family,” said Becker at a press conference Thursday, which coincided with Adji’s seventh birthday. “And that’s our hope with this case.”

Adji was last seen playing outside of his grandmother’s house in Farm Worker Village in Immokalee on Jan. 10, while his mother was at work.

As to what may have happened to the developmentally-challenged boy, Becker said that remains unknown.

“I have no idea what happened to Adji,” he said. “I wish I did so we could focus on one direction or the other. At this point we don’t know if it’s a case where Adji walked off and got lost, or Adji got picked up by somebody and taken away from Farm Workers Village.”

And as time goes on, Becker said authorities are more and more dependent on assistance from the public to try to crack the case.

That’s why Collier officials said the search for Adji would extend to the mailboxes of millions of residents across the United States.

Adji’s photo will be featured on national direct-mail advertising fliers to be distributed to 75 million homes across the United States from Nov. 8 through Dec. 13.

“We’re hoping with those flyers and this conference today, that we can remind people that they may have the bit of information that may reunite Adji with his mother, stepfather and his new baby sister,” said Becker.

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children has partnered with Valassis, one of the nation’s leading media and marketing services companies, and the U.S. Postal Service in distributing the fliers as part of Valassis’ Have You Seen Me? picture program.

Carleen Coelho, who coordinates the Missing Child program for Valassis, said that the company would also be featuring Adji in their freestanding newspaper inserts.

“It’s unprecedented,” said Coelho. “He’s going to be featured across a very broad national network.”

National Center for Missing & Exploited Children president and CEO Ernie Allen said the nonprofit pushes very hard to keep these cases alive — especially in a case like Adji’s.

“I firmly believe that somebody knows where Adji is and that somebody knows what happened to him,” said Allen.

He added that a picture is the most important tool authorities have in the search for a missing child.

Nine out of every 10 American households is expected to get a flier/newspaper insert, said Allen.

“Virtually every home in America will receive Adji’s information,” Allen said. “Our hope is that somebody out there has seen him.”

The fliers will be distributed weekly by region, starting in the Northeast on Nov. 8. They are scheduled to arrive in Florida mailboxes the week of Nov. 15.

The search for Adji and the other children who have gone missing from Collier County over the years won’t end until they’re found, Becker said.

“I’m always confident that they will come home some day,” he said.