For Sale: A Sense of Security : It’s every parent’s worst nightmare--a missing child. Now, more businesses are cashing in on that fear.

You’re in the supermarket, reading cereal-box labels. Your 4-year-old is at your side. Or rather, he was there a minute ago.

You call him. No answer.

You call again. And again.

You zip through the aisles, looking. There’s not a trace.

What goes through your mind is unbelievable, unacceptable, impossible to contemplate--and yet it is your very real fear. Did someone lift him up and carry him away?

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This scene plays out millions of times every day as children of all ages act exactly like children and fail to appear where expected.

In earlier eras, foul play was the last thing parents thought of at a time like this. Today, it’s often the first.

And why not? Posters of missing children adorn shop windows and supermarket bulletin boards; photos are shown on public service TV spots and on local newscasts. High-profile abductions are turned into heart-wrenching TV films. And each week, 57 million families around the country receive postcard-sized ads for local businesses in their mailboxes; on the front of each ad is the face of a missing child.

All this publicity understandably pushes parents to greater awareness and caution as a new generation of business ventures moves to cash in on their protective urge.

At first, the entrepreneurs dealt mainly in identification cards, which can be of enormous help when parents are upset and police need vital statistics on the missing child, along with a clear, full-face, current photograph--fast.

Starla DuBois of Ventura began Secure Child in 1990. The firm offers laminated cards ($10) containing a thumbprint, photo and the child’s vital statistics--plus advice on how to prevent abduction.

In Austin, Tex., Saf-T-Child offers ID cards for $6, or a $25 package that includes two cards, a cassette on safety and a parents’ workshop.

Woodland Hills photographer Bunny Samuels came up with Safe-4-Kids, a wallet-size photo ID card ($5) containing vital statistics, to be carried by the parents.

At the Sherman Oaks Galleria in 1990, security guards used the Safe-4-Kids card to find a preschooler who had been abducted while shopping with his mother in a department store. Guards recognized the toddler from the photo and from other information on the card--even though the child had been wrapped in a blanket and his face had been darkened with shoe polish.

Ident-A-Kid, in Florida, offers a similar ID card for $5 through a national network of representatives who travel to schools each year. They now sell more than 3 million cards annually.

The market seems to be growing as worrisome statistics on missing children become public. In a 1994 poll conducted by Audits and Surveys Worldwide, 75% of parents said child abduction is of “great and serious concern.”

Ernie Allen, director of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children--a nonprofit information clearinghouse that works with the U.S. Department of Justice--says 954,896 missing-person reports were entered on the FBI’s national crime computer in 1994. About 800,000 of those were children.

In some entrepreneurial minds, the time is ripe for “the next step” in child-safety precautions.

Earlier this month, in major newspapers across the country, $18 million worth of full-page ads introduced a service called the Family Protection Network. For $250 per year, the ads say, your child will be registered in a national computer databank and you are guaranteed high-level search-and-recover methods should your offspring be lost, abducted or run away.

The ads imply that in unusual cases such as child abduction, the usual law enforcement measures may not be fast or good enough. What’s more, they imply, many parents are not able to give police up-to-date information about their children. They may not even have the most helpful kind of photo to assist in the search. FPN ads promise to solve all that.

FPN, based in Jacksonville, Fla., promises to keep your child’s current photos, fingerprints, hair and blood information, and dental records in secure computer files--ready to distribute around the country “at a moment’s notice.”

And that’s just the beginning. The company’s literature further vows that it will have 1,000 detectives ready to work on your case nationwide, plus search dogs, polygraphs, low-light photography, crisis intervention for the anxious parents, media advisers to tell you what to say on radio and TV, forensic artists--”even helicopters with thermographic capabilities.”

FPN is one of several business units of SafeCard Services Inc., a credit-card registry firm that also manages or owns, among other things, a Professional Golf Assn. tour business, a mail-order company that sells artworks inspired by the Vatican and an information-processing firm for commercial car, van and truck fleets.

“When I took over here at SafeCard last year, I saw we have this capability of handling confidential information on a secure database, and notifying people when there’s a loss,” says chairman and CEO Paul C. Kahn. “Basically, I said if we can register and protect people’s credit cards, why can’t we do it for their children?”

Kahn says that through market research, he found that parents are worried about the amount of help available from police and the FBI if their child disappears. These agencies may be superb in their efforts, Kahn says, but everyone knows public resources are limited and dwindling.

“Because we’re a for-profit business,” Kahn says, “we can provide services that regular law enforcement agencies don’t have the money to provide.

“We expect to enroll hundreds of thousands of families at annual fees of either $50 or $250 each.” For the lower fee, all physical information on the child is registered in the databank, and if that child disappears the information is immediately transmitted to law enforcement and the media. For $250 annually, FPN’s investigative capabilities will be put into play if a child disappears.

“We can afford to do all this because it’s a case of signing up many people for a situation that will only hit a few. And in those few cases, we are structured to have detectives at your house within an hour and we can go right into action using high-tech resources to find that child.”

The massive advertising campaign for FPN has attracted plenty of attention--and a lawsuit.

“It’s overkill--the prostitution of a very good idea, my idea,” says Edward DuBois. He claims in a civil theft suit filed April 11 in Palm Beach County, Fla., circuit court that he conceived of a national computerized child registry in the late ‘80s--and that his concept and even his firm name (Family Protection Plan) were stolen by Kahn.

“Nonsense,” says Kahn, who asserts that he dreamed up the idea himself. The case is pending.

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Whoever thought up the idea, not everyone agrees it’s a great one.

“We do not comment on specific products or services, but we have traditionally been opposed to a central registry of children,” says Allen, of the Arlington, Va.-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

“Our view is that parents ought to be proactive. They ought to find out what information they need on their child, they ought to get it and keep it updated in a safe place to use in case their child is missing.”

Everything parents need can be obtained without cost, Allen says.

Each August, for example, Blockbuster stores offer free videotaping of children. The tapes are specifically geared for identification purposes, Allen says, and kids love doing them. Other stores offer similar free programs.

Polaroid has a free program called Kidcare ID, which includes a passport-style booklet that parents fill in and keep. Often police departments will do free fingerprinting of your child, Allen says.

Update everything once a year, he urges, and keep it all together in a safe place. If an emergency occurs, you’ll have a videotape that shows your child moving and speaking, a current full-face photo and a complete physical description.

“There have been a bunch of business ventures that have tried to register children,” Allen says. “We wonder exactly how secure is that computerized information? What can be done with it if someone unauthorized gets a hold of it? And can the firm sell the information to other sources when the child turns 18?”

How much need is there for such a registry in the first place? Allen asks.

“In 1994, 99% of all missing-children cases in the FBI files were solved by police,” he says.

He urges parents to “call police the minute a child is missing, or thought to be abducted.” And don’t let the police tell you there’s a waiting period before they will take a report, he says.

A 1990 federal law eliminated waiting periods in cases of missing children. Police must respond immediately and take a report.