May 25, 2019 marks 40 years since six-year-old Etan Patz disappeared from a New York City street corner. His disappearance led President Ronald Reagan to declare the first National Missing Children's Day on May 25, 1983.
Every year since, the Department of Justice has held a ceremony to recognize the extraordinary efforts to bring missing children home.
In recognition of this year's National Missing Children's Day, the FBI is asking everyone to take a few minutes and look at the faces of missing children on the agency's website and to look at the online database listing kidnapped and missing persons by year.
FBI DATABASE: Kidnapped and missing persons
The agency is also encouraging parents to be prepared for the unthinkable by downloading the Child ID app. It allows parents to keep updated photos and descriptions of their children, so if they go missing, you can quickly send that crucial information to authorities.
In 2018, there were 424,066 missing children entries in the FBI’s National Crime Information Center.