"Do you teach children to chew through duct tape?"
That question was posed to the Utah Council for Crime Prevention this week after 7-year-old Erica Pratt of Philadelphia freed herself from captors by gnawing through tape binding her hands.
The query reflects a growing concern that has moved parents to discuss "stranger danger" with children and unite with neighbors in crime-fighting efforts.
About 1,000 calls have flooded the Salt Lake crime prevention offices since Elizabeth Smart was reported taken from her Salt Lake home June 5.
"We just can't keep up," said Tibby Milne, the council's executive director and Utah PTA safety commissioner. "It's tremendous."
Utah's efforts became most visible when hundreds of volunteers showed up to search for Elizabeth, 14, in the days following her disappearance.
Similar efforts were repeated last week in Santa Ana, Calif., when a motorist snatched 5-year-old Samantha Runnion as she played in her yard. Runnion's body was found shortly afterward. A man was charged in the slaying.
And again Friday morning, police helicopters, bloodhounds and a volunteer force searched for a pajama-clad 6-year-old, Cassandra "Casey" Williamson, apparently kidnapped as she sat in her kitchen awaiting breakfast. A body believed to be Casey's was subsequently found in a glass factory.
Eagle Mountain resident Lori Rodabough understands the need to help. And she was jolted when the unthinkable almost happened to her family.
Rodabough says her 4-year-old was giggling and playing in her front yard when a black sedan pulled up to the curb. Husband Adam glanced out the window to check on little Victoria.
What he saw made his heart race.
He saw a man open the car door and beckon to his daughter.
Panicked, he yelled from the front door. But before he could rush outside, the man quickly shut the door and drove out of sight.
"He was talking to me, Daddy," Victoria, who goes by Tori, told her father. "He said, 'Get in the car.' "
"She's so naive. She wouldn't think twice about going with somebody if they had candy or asked her to help find a puppy," Lori Rodabough said. "What I told her is that he could have taken her away from Mommy and Daddy. And she just said, 'Why would he want to do that, Mommy?' "
Parents might struggle with such a question — but the crime prevention office has answers.
Its packets include role-playing scenarios to teach children to recognize and react to danger, by screaming and looking for an escape.
Utah parents in the past two months have requested copies by the hundreds. Since their scare, the Rodaboughs have made a game out of the seriousness of training a child to resist an abductor.
"What do you do if anyone you don't know offers you candy?" asks Lori Rodabough. "What do you say?"
"No!" yells Victoria.
"That's right," the mother says, lavishing praise on the preschooler.
Public schools reinforce such lessons as part of the state health core curriculum.
Children as young as kindergartners are taught to recognize surroundings, strangers, potential danger and safe symbols and people, such as police and crossing guards.
Schools including Creekside Elementary in Kaysville also ask parents to help little ones find safe walking routes to school.
Creekside parents, who prepared children to begin year-round school this week, were encouraged to partner peers so no one walks alone. Principal Donald Holt also planned to invite school resource officers to discuss safety with students.
"We're alarmed with what could be happening in a child's own neighborhood," Holt said. "This is not in response to what's happened recently but because those are things we want to be aware of with elementary-aged children."
The Utah PTA hopes to take the awareness one step further. It is spearheading statewide school visits to mark the 20th anniversary of the McGruff House program, which Milne started following the unsolved kidnapping and murder of 3-year-old Rachael Runyan, who was kidnapped in Sunset.
Milne hopes the visits encourage residents to volunteer for McGruff Houses or other safe havens children can run to when in danger. McGruff House residents undergo criminal background checks then post window signs displaying the cartoon crime-fighting dog.
Ultimately Milne, who mails child safety packets to parents who ask for them, wants to double Utah's McGruff houses to 4,000.
This fall she hopes to campaign for child fingerprinting, which would give police a place to start if tragedy strikes.
Parents also are reverting to grass-roots efforts to stop crime in neighborhoods.
The Rodaboughs never filed a police report on their daughter's incident — they say they never got a suspect description or license plate number.
But Lori Rodabough is notifying every mother in her neighborhood about the threat. Now, moms keep their eyes open for strangers. Some alert others when children shuffle their play from house to house.
"We have our own little neighborhood look-out going on," she said. "You just never know. You can't be too careful with children."
E-mail: jtcook@desnews.com; jeffh@desnews.com