It's been three years since 6-year-old Crystal Tymich vanished.
Three years since police called off the canines, the door-to-door search and the roadblock in her South Central Los Angeles neighborhood, where she last was seen playing with her brothers.Three years since her father, Mario Tymich, has felt a moment of peace.
"Every morning when I go to work," he said, "I walk to the back of the house. I always look in her room and look at her bed I say, `Dear God, please bring Crystal home soon."
It's heartbreaking stories like Tymich's that prompted Norm Wigginton and Rebecca Gold to do more than just wring their hands in frustration.
Wigginton and Gold have put Crystal's photograph on the backs of four Wigginton's Plumbing Service trucks, along with pictures of two other missing Southern California girls.
The other girls are: Nancy May Huang, 14, unaccountably missing since April 30, 1996, and Jessica Eva Hill, 9, whom police say was abducted by her mother on Sept. 2, 1995.
Although photos of America's missing children have appeared on milk cartons and billboards, the use of plumbing trucks is believed to be the first effort of its kind in California.
Wigginton, who owns the company in the Los Angeles suburb of Sylmar, and company vice president Gold said they didn't do it for the publicity, however. Like Crystal's dad, they hope that the fleet of trucks will one day help bring the girl home.
"I drive all over the Valley, and I have high visibility impact," said Wigginton, owner of the company. "You never know who is going to be behind my truck."
Today is National Missing Children's Day, established in 1983 by President Ronald Reagan.
Last year, 125,651 California children were reported missing, according to the state Department of Justice. On average, nine out of 10 children turn out to be runaways who returned home a month or two later.
Of about 10,054 children still unaccounted for at the end of last year, nearly 9,000 were believed to be runaways, 66 appeared to have been kidnapped by noncustodial parents and six children were believed to be abducted by strangers.
The fate of another 400 is unknown.
While efforts like Wigginton's may seem small in the face of these numbers, experts in the field insist that every effort helps.
Since the problem - and too often, the horror - of missing children burst into public consciousness in the early '80s, nonprofits and corporations have publicized children's visages on grocery bags and billboards, buses and airport kiosks, rest stop bulletin boards and direct-mail advertisements.
The movement has been effective.
One in seven children who return home are found after someone has recognized the child's picture, said Julie Cartwright, director of public affairs for the National Center for Missing and Exploi-ted Children.
Wigginton's effort is believed to be the first time in California a company has put children's faces on trucks.