Written by: Edward Wei, The Epoch Times

The Commission on Missing and Exploited Children (COMEC) is a small non-profit organization with only a $60,000 annual budget, but it serves over 3,000 children reported missing or exploited every year with a recovery rate of over 90%. That's largely in part to the tireless work of Memphis Police Sergeant Leonard Edwards.

According to Tran Smith, Board President of COMEC (http://www.comec.org), the organization is the only non-profit missing children's organization in Tennessee, the only regional group that can issue the AMBER Alert (America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response) and the only one that offers most of its services at no charge.

The group was funded by Honorable Judge Kenneth A. Turner in June 1984. Sergeant Edwards has served the 22-year-old COMEC as its Executive Director for the past 15 years. Sergeant Edwards wants people to call him "Len."

On a day in November 1999, Christy Perkins, the mother of two boys, came into Len's office. While the couple was divorcing, the father, Craig Walker, abducted his sons Landon, 8, and Logan, 2, during a weekend when Christy Perkins was working.

With help from COMEC and the National Commission on Missing and Exploited Children, and after a nineteen-month search, the boys were located in Florianopolis, Brazil, and returned on 23 May 2001.

"COMEC was very proactive," said Perkins. "Sergeant Len Edwards kept in touch, supplied flyers and sent information anywhere he felt the boys might be found." "I actually saw a COMEC flyer in the airport in Miami when the boys were returned." "Len is always on call and never turns anyone away who seeks services," says COMEC board member Sherry Schedler. "Parents frequently bring their children to him as a last resort. When the child won't open up or talk with a psychologist, counselor, or friend, they will talk with Len."

Edwards is also good at finding right people for the commission. In November 2005, Tran Smith, an award winning TV news reporter who had just left the news business to stay home with her son, was recruited to be COMEC's Board President.

Tran Smith (maiden name Tran Bui) came to America as a refugee from communism when she was 4 years old after the fall of Saigon. Her family had nothing when the U.S. Navy plucked them from the ocean off the coast of Vietnam. During her upbringing in Northwest Arkansas she excelled in school and eventually chose a career in broadcast journalism.

During her career in Arkansas, Florida and Memphis, Tran Smith was named best reporter in the state of Tennessee by the Associated Press in 2004. She's received four awards from the Florida Associated Press for reporting. "I covered many stories on missing children and they usually brought me to the office of Memphis Police Sergeant Len Edwards," said Smith, "When I became a mom, I became even more passionate about COMEC."

"It takes $60,000 to run the Commission," she continued, "It's not much money (for an organization to work on about 3,000 cases every year), but when you're a small organization like ours that money doesn't always come easy." So after she chaired the board, she wanted to bring in more funds to support the Commission. Besides donations from FedEx, Wolf Ardis Law Firm, Mark Rulman's Wealth Solutions, Bud Davis Cadillac, The Sims Financial Group and golfer Loren Roberts, COMEC is holding its first major fundraiser, the Glitter Gala at Southwind Country Club in November. Tran has promoted the Gala to her friends from many organizations.

"I just don't know what parents searching for their children did before COMEC existed. The support that comes from this organization has no determinable value—it's priceless," said Perkins, "and that is why COMEC needs to continue."