KD Sunday Spotlight: Pennsylvania Emergency Response Center give the missing a voice
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - In this week's KD Sunday Spotlight, we're highlighting a new organization that's ready to lend a hand when every second counts.
The Pennsylvania Emergency Response Center prepares families for emergencies and assists with search and rescue efforts when someone goes missing.
The volunteers are extremely passionate about helping families.
You never know when an emergency will strike and that's where the Pennsylvania Emergency Response Center comes in.
"You never know when something's going to happen and so you need to prepare yourself and your family for the worst, even though you're hoping it will never happen," said Trevor Reed.
Reed is from Coraopolis and is the center's executive director. He said they also work to give the missing a voice.
"America does have a lot of missing kids and Pennsylvania sadly is one of the higher states with active missing children cases, not all of them in recent years," he explained.
Reed said they saw a need in the area for search and rescue teams that focus on families so the organization was launched in early 2022 with just four volunteers, now, they have about 20.
They attend as many local events as they can in order to get families prepared for the unthinkable.
"We focus mainly on educating families on how to keep themselves and their families safe in different disaster situations, from fingerprinting to providing child ID kits for the kids to providing to here's what you need to have prepared if anything were to happen," Reed said.
The organization provides scent sample collection kits which ensure search crews and their K9s would have an intact sample, should a child go missing.
They also provide child ID cards and all of it is free of charge.
"We'll take the child's photo, fingerprints, get their height, weight, eye color, hair color, the general information, we provide the parent a printout of the information as well as a flash drive with the information," Reed explained. "We also have access to a phone app that they can have on their iPhone or Android phone."
Those simple steps can be crucial when every second counts.
"That information on that ID is everything that police and first responders may need to whether it's to deploy a search and rescue team or whether it's to issue an amber alert or endangered persons alert," Reed continued.
Reed said if a loved one goes missing, the first thing families should do is contact the police and get a missing persons report filed. From there, Penn ERC then can advocate for families in their moment of need.
"Whether they filed that report with the police or not, we'll get guide them through that process of contacting the police, making sure that person is entered into the national missing persons' database and help organize boots on the ground search if needed, we'll generate missing persons files, share those around on our social media and some of our partners as well," he said.
The volunteers have been training with other groups so they'll be ready to start search and rescue operations.
If you see the Penn ERC team at an event, you'll probably also spot some trained therapy dogs, including Reed's pup, all of which are from Therapy Dogs United.
Reed said his dog is going to train to become an air-scent dog.
This dedicated team is looking forward to reaching more families so they know that in their times of need, there is help out there.
"I know it's hard but get in contact with organizations like ourselves that really have been doing this for a while and kind of help you move through that process a lot," Reed said. "We hope for families it's their first time going through it, sadly it won't be our first, so we have the resources, we have the expertise to help them."
You can learn more about the Penn ERC at an upcoming event they're hosting in Coraopolis on August 5.
It's taking place at the Susie Letteri Riverfront Park starting at 4 p.m.
If you can't make it and would like a child ID or scent kit, you can just reach out to them on their website.
They also have many volunteer opportunities available.
All of that can be found right here.
If you want to see an organization highlighted, tell KDKA-TV about it! Just send Jessica Guay an e-mail at jguay@kdka.com or spotlight@kdka.com.