In many local elementary schools, every few weeks the “Lost and Found” box is emptied out and the contents are scattered down the length of the main hall. Coats, mittens, shoes, sweatshirts, gym clothes, are all laid down and spread out in the hopes that their owners will spot them and take them home. But the scene of all those empty clothes creates an eerie sensation, as if it is not the clothes that had been left behind, but that the children themselves have somehow been “lost” — zapped out of their clothes and transported to somewhere far away. For any parent walking down those empty halls, those empty clothes give an empty feeling, a feeling that is disturbing and desolate.

Losing track of a child is every parent’s worst nightmare. It only takes a moment to go from peaceful to panic w…