By STEPHANIE HAYES, Times Staff Writer
Published September 4, 2005
TAMPA - They call it a bittersweet family reunion. They are parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and friends with a common thread - a child in their lives has gone missing.
150 people walked around Al Lopez Park Saturday morning for the Have a Heart for Missing Children walk.
They displayed signs, buttons and T-shirts emblazoned with their lost one's images.
"It's good because nobody else knows how you feel," said Hilary Sessions of Valrico, whose daughter Tiffany Sessions was 20 when she disappeared from the University of Florida in 1989. Hilary Sessions is now executive director of Child Protection Education of America, a national private foundation for missing children that hosts the walk.
"A lot of us don't have any answers, but we still have to move on and we still have to do something positive for everybody else so that they don't have to deal with what we have to deal with."
The walk is not a fundraiser, but rather an event to create awareness of missing children. Participants will also walk in Miami, Orlando, Jacksonville and Tallahassee.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's Web site, http://www.missingkids.com says there are close to 800,000 missing children in the United States. Recent local high-profile cases such as the abduction and killings of Jessica Lunsford, Carlie Brucia and Sarah Lunde have created more awareness.
But while that heightened attention flows, it also ebbs, said Roy Brown, father of Amanda Brown, who was abducted from her mother's Seffner home and murdered at age 7. Roy Brown wore a shirt bearing Amanda's name in pink letters.
"You hear about these sexual predators really heavy, then they just kind of fade off and you don't hear about it any more," said Brown, who started the Have a Heart walk with the family of Zachary Bernhardt four years ago.
Twenty-five of Zachary's family members turned up to walk, the blond boy's school picture pinned to their matching shirts. Zachary disappeared from his Clearwater apartment on Sept. 11, 2000, the same day Amanda disappeared in 1998.
"It's kind of a reunion," said Denise Simpkins, Zachary's aunt. "One you don't really want to go to, but don't have a choice."
Sessions said while she enjoys the camaraderie, she hopes the "family" of families becomes smaller.
Three months ago, Sessions started a task force to spread abduction education and awareness, step up digital fingerprinting and introduce new legislation.
Currently, an officer can't arrest someone who is only seen enticing a child. Sessions would like to change that.
"We want to make sure the laws are there that law enforcement can enforce to keep these bad guys off the street," she said. "We are making a difference, and you'll see some new laws come about."
