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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN MEDIA CONFERENCENovember 2, 2009Andrew ArenaKenny HansmirePeter MunozRich RodriguezJoe TheismannCOACH RODRIGUEZ: We'll start off with something that's non-sports related. Years back I had the opportunity when I was coaching at West Virginia to get involved with Kenny Hansmire, who's the Child ID program director, and they came up with a concept of trying to ID every child in America, which is a pretty lofty goal. But any parent can probably relate to this, probably your greatest fear is losing or having a missing child, and over 800,000 children are missing every year. And to have an ID kit at home, say if the child, God forbid, ever is missing and to help with the FBI or the local authorities to find them is something that's as worthwhile a cause as you could ever imagine. The whole concept started with coaches having an opportunity to get the message out and get the word out, particularly at home games. Home games, whether you have 50,000 or 100,000, that's a lot of people that have an opportunity to take an ID kit, take it home and ID their children and have it just in case. With Kenny's direction and leadership, and he and I both being on the American Football Coaches Association, we came out, and this kind of spread throughout other states. Well, fortunately now here in the state of Michigan this same concept has come to fruition, and thanks to a lot of people, Kenny, all the state and local authorities and particularly Wal-Mart with their sponsorship, now close to 300,000 child ID kits will be distributed to kindergarten and first-graders throughout the state, and our goal will be eventually to ID every child in the state. But to have this jump-started because of the sponsorship of Wal-Mart and everybody involved, to me it's very positive news, especially in this economy and state that we're in. I feel very proud to have a small, small part of this. I hope in the future that I can help Kenny and everybody else reach our goal of ID'ing every child in the state of Michigan. With that, I'd like to introduce the man who's at the forefront and it's been tremendous, what he's been able to do with his leadership, and again, he and I are on the board, Kenny Hansmire. KENNY HANSMIRE: Coach is being very humble. There's 300,000 children that will get these ID kits; again, it's every kindergartner through first-grader in the state of Michigan. That's a lot of kids. To tell you how big that effort is, everybody has heard of the Center for Missing Children. The center does about 100,000 a year in their programs. The Coaches Association, we do with 3.4 million ID kits that go out in different states. Coach is joining our coaches across the state, Bobby Bowden, Mack Brown, Bob Stoops, and little nemesis down south here that we do a press conference in tomorrow, Coach Tressel. Coach Tressel, they were coming up here to Michigan first, and he goes, no, I want to do my press conference first, and we said, no, we're going to do it in Michigan because it's good news for Michigan. The Wal-Mart Foundation through the leadership of Wal-Mart working with the coaches and working with Coach Rodriguez and Coach Carr came to the child ID program and asked what they could do to help the kids in Michigan. I told them that we were reaching tout to make sure that all the children in Michigan had child ID kids, and we came up with an idea that every kindergarten plus first-grade child in the great state of Michigan would have this ID kit. It's all happened in the month of November. The governor has proclaimed November Child ID Month, and there will be those 300,000 -- actually it's 290,000, but the reason we're saying 300,000 is we're also going to take care of private schools. But what will happen is those ID kits will go out into the school districts, they'll be distributed to the homerooms. In those homerooms there will be a letter that goes home with that ID kit, and that ID kit will end up in mom's house. It takes five minutes to fill the ID kit out with a child, and then the parent keeps the ID back in case of emergency. This is not a database or anything like that. We hope it's a keepsake, that if it's ever needed, the parent can go and retrieve her ID kit and take it over to law enforcement. It is a problem in the United States. We have over 800,000 children missing somewhere in America. That's one every 40 seconds. 450,000 of those are runaways, 350,000 are parent abduction, and 56,000 are the worst, which are stranger abductions. It's needed. It gives law enforcement vital information on a child when a child is missing. Again, I want to tell you, Rich Rodriguez is very humble. There's only been 17 FBI directors awards for child safety given in the history of the FBI, and the first recipient of that was the West Virginia head coach back about five and a half years ago. He was the very first recipient. He led the way for our other coaches, and many of the coaches I just named before have gone on to win that award. Rich Rodriguez will be the first coach to ever receive that award twice. Anytime that you're reaching out and touching the lives and touching the future of Michigan -- Coach was helping protect Michigan kids way long before he got here, and I think that that's newsworthy. So again, we have great news in the state and the economy, great news today. I know Coach wishes he had something positive to talk about on the game this weekend, but this is very positive that we're protecting -- Coach is involved in protecting the future of Michigan and protecting our children. I'd like to introduce a gentleman that it's his responsibility to protect the future of this great state, Colonel Muñoz. COLONEL PETER C. MUÑOZ: Thank you, Coach Rodriguez, for hosting this event, and certainly thank you for your leadership in this area, also. The Michigan State Police on behalf of Governor Jennifer Granholm, who as declared November as child identification month in Michigan, is proud to lend our support to this laudable initiative. While no parent hopes to ever learn that their child has gone missing, having a child identification kit available is an important safeguard. Being able to quickly provide vital information such as a recent photo, physical characteristics to law enforcement can make a tremendous difference in getting a child home safely. I appreciate the leadership of the American Football Coaches Association and the FBI, as well as the generous support of Wal-Mart and the FBI National Citizens Academy Alumni Association in making these kits available free of charge to every kindergartner and first-grade student in our state. Thanks again to all our partners in this effort, and I hope our schools take full advantage of this opportunity. It's my privilege to introduce our next speaker, special agent in charge, Andrew Arena of the FBI in Detroit. ANDREW ARENA: Thank you. Just briefly, on behalf of the FBI and state of Michigan and the FBI nationally, I'd like to thank the American Football Coaches Association for the support of this program. It's been around for quite a few years now and it's been real hit-or-miss trying to get these packets out to the kids. I know in the past the Citizens Academy along with the University of Michigan have tried at home games and different venues to get these out, and it really is hit-or-miss. I think the idea of getting these out to the homeroom of every school in the state of Michigan is an outstanding idea. I know my four-year old actually on Friday brought one of these kits home from her preschool, so it's starting to get out there already. I think they jumped the gun a little bit. But it is a great idea. The point is, as we said earlier, 800,000 kids go missing every year. Here in this area it's been driven home in the last year. The Garcia case, the Buchanan case down in Monroe, it's really been driven home to us how bad an issue this is. I really want to thank Coach Rodriguez and the University of Michigan for their support of this program. It's my pleasure now to introduce Joe Venezia from Wal-Mart. JOE THEISMANN: Thank you, Andy. Kenny, Coach, appreciate it, Colonel Muñoz. On behalf of Wal-Mart, it's a great day today. With this $270,000 charitable gift we're going to be able to identify 290,000 first-graders and kindergartners. Just like a football program, we've got to start at the beginning in terms of identifying folks, and this is an investment that you really won't know how much it's worth until you really need it. Then it becomes invaluable. Every day we strive to save people money so they can live better, but ultimately it's our leadership responsibility in the communities that's most important. Thank you, and with that, let's present the check. COACH RODRIGUEZ: I thank you all. This is as important as anything that we'll do as people to help save a child. It's a great cause, and everybody that's behind it, I'm humbled to be part of it. It was Kenny who really came forward with this, and we as coaches, our programs are so visible, it was really a way to get the message out, so that was an easy thing for us to do. End of FastScripts |
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