Every parent’s worst nightmare is losing their child. For years, parents have invented ways to help police identify their child.

Lew Lazarow, a member and former president of the State College Rotary Club, said he remembers using child ID cards for his children when they were young.

Lazarow said he taught at Cherokee High School in Marlton, New Jersey, and was the adviser for the high school’s Rotary Interact Club.

The ID cards were one of the service projects the club worked on when he was there. 

The card would have a picture of the child along with some “descriptive information” on it, Lazarow said. 

If a child got lost, the parents could give the ID card to any police officer to help the police find the child, he said.

When Lazarow’s son Jake Lazarow was in high school, he wanted to improve the concept for an Eagle Scout project. 

Lew said his son told him the cards are now “impractical” because of how fast children grow. Each parent would be “stuck” with a card for an entire year, he said. 

Jake told his father, “I think we can do better,” Lew recalled. 

For his project, Jake said he could store all of the information from the old cards on a USB flash drive, Lew said.

Jake reached out to the police department in Marlton, and the officers “absolutely loved it,” Lew said. 

Once his project was over, Jake gave it to the police “lock, stock and barrel,” Lew said. He said the department still uses it to this day. 

In 2019, Lew told the State College Rotary Club about his son’s Child ID program. 

Lew brought Jake, a member of the 2020 Penn State class, to help Lew pitch the project to the club. 

The club agreed to develop it through a rotary district grant.

Lew said he “stole” the project from Jake for the Rotary Club.

Jake said his father is “giving [him] a lot more credit” because Lew “ran” the Child ID program at the Interact Club first. 

Jake “stole” the idea for the project from his father’s project and just “modernized” it, he said.

The local police in Marlton also helped promote the program, since Jake was in high school and “didn’t have connections with all these neighborhoods like the police departments did,” Jake said. 

Jake said he moved on from the Eagle Scout project once he was finished with it. 

“My dad kind of took it and ran with it,” Jake said. “He called me up one day, and he was like, ‘Hey, we’re doing it here [in State College].’”

Jake said his father was at all of the promotion events back in New Jersey because he was a scoutmaster, so he knew how the digital technology worked. 

Lew said the program tries to do “as many community events as [it] can, most of the time in partnership with law enforcement.”

At every Child ID event, Lew said he gives parents the flash drive that they can keep on their keychain.

The drive has an editable PDF form with all of the information the police recommend parents put on the drive about their child, such as height, weight, eye and hair color. 

The Child ID program promotes itself by partnering with local police departments.

Sheriff Bryan Sampsel of Centre County, said the program first partnered with the Centre County Sheriff’s Office at the Grange Fair.

Sampsel said whenever a child goes missing, “it’s all hands on deck” for the police. “Everyone's scrambling around trying to get information about the child.” 

With a flash drive, the police don’t need to “scramble and have 10 different people taking different notes,” Sampsel said.

Sampsel also recommended placing videos of children walking on the flash drive, as well as voice recordings. 

A child’s voice and walk are both characteristics an abductor cannot change, as opposed to hair or clothes, Sampsel said. 

Lew estimated around 200 families use the Child ID program for their children in State College. 

Sampsel said he has been putting a flash drive together for his own two children.

Another potential use Lew has heard for the ID program is for elderly people with cognitive disabilities.

Lew said due to the digital drives, police officers can also more easily send the child’s information to every computer in the police network.

“No matter where you go, that information is going to be accessible to the people who need it most to be able to spread the word out through law enforcement officials… to speed up the process of getting a child reunited,” Lew said.

The State College Police Department requested the public's assistance Thursday in identifyin…

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Danny Gotwals is a news reporter for The Daily Collegian. He is a "super senior" majoring in digital and print journalism with a minor in history.

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