In 2006, the Washington State Patrol approached Pacific, Wash.-based Gordon Trucking, asking if the carrier would participate in a program to get posters of missing children on the sides of its trailers. As a family business, Gordon Trucking jumped at the opportunity to help out local families in the Washington area, according to Steve Gordon, chief operating officer.

"As a locally owned and operated company, we were happy to help the state

and the communities that Gordon Trucking serves," Gordon said. "Being a family business, it's a family cause. It really hit the right tone with us."

The company started out with about four posters, growing to nearly 70 trailers outfitted with the child posters today. When the company first started doing this, Gordon said a mother of one of the missing children would call the trucking company every week, asking where the trailer was with her daughter's picture on it. Then one day she called in, "'I don't need to check where the trailer is. My daughter is coming home,'" Gordon recalled.

And while Gordon believes she came home mostly due to the efforts of the Washington State Patrol and law enforcement, the girl's family feels the poster played a role, as it may have alerted tipsters who saw it. "Indirectly, they felt it helped," Gordon said.

"Since the program's beginning, three children that the state patrol featured on our trailers have been found alive," said Gordon. "Although the State Patrol cannot directly attribute this success to the posters, Gordon Trucking's involvement in the program has been one of the most rewarding experiences in my professional career."

Currently, Gordon Trucking is the only carrier participating in the Washington program, which is called Homeward Bound. The company, a member of the American Trucking Associations, hopes to encourage ATA members and other fleets to get involved with similar causes in their states. According to Gordon, it's a worthwhile and inexpensive way to help the community. It's also a way for the trucking industry to contribute to the community in a way other industries can't.

In Washington, the state patrol has 19 missing children in the Homeward Bound program, each with a poster that includes the name of the child, contact information for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and two photos -- one from the time of disappearance and another that is age-progressed.

"The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reports that 1 in 6 children are successfully recovered due to the public viewing a picture," said Luci Stewart, manager of the Washington State Patrol Missing Persons Unit. "Because people spend so much of their lives in their vehicles, this was naturally a great way to reach them."

On a national level, about 1.3 million children go missing every year, with about 1,800 missing children cases at any given time in Washington alone.