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www.oakvillebeaver.com The Oakville Beaver Weekend, Saturday November 15, 2008 - 3 Reuniting families is the best part of the job Telling parents their missing child won't be coming back is the worst part By Melanie Cummings SPECIAL TO THE BEAVER F rom a tiny apartment office in Bronte, Barbara Snider searches the world for missing children. And in 25 years of reuniting families she has a treasure trove of stories to tell. Snider is an international investigator with the Missing Children Society of Canada, which closed 1,600 cases last year and assisted in 4,200 cases with law enforcement officers. As heroic as this job sounds in its synopsis, it is delicate work with raw emotions that are rattled with confusion, fear and apprehension. Snider's role is multifaceted: she helps build scrapbooks of memories for parents awaiting the return of their child, sympathetically relays the harrowing news to families that their child will not be coming home again, dispatches joyous information of a successful recovery, browbeats lawmakers into assistance and passes on vital details to police officials. In 2007 there were 60,582 children reported missing in Canada -- more than 46,000 of them were runaways, who were back home within 48 hours. Stranger abductions represented just less than one per cent of the total last year and parental abductions comprised 576 of the cases. A statistical compilation, such as this, is a big step in documenting information about missing children in this country. For this, Snider is grateful to former solicitor general Perrin Beatty, who oversaw the establishment of the RCMP Missing Children's Registry in 1986, an investigative and consulting service to all Canadian and U.S. police forces and agencies, as well as other foreign police departments through Interpol. "Before this, the Canadian government knew more about the number of cars stolen than the number of missing children," said Snider. It was chance that led her to her job that is part investigator, social worker, psychologist, lawyer, bureaucrat and negotiator. During her recovery from a back injury sustained while working as a nurse at OakvilleTrafalgar Memorial Hospital (OTMH), Snider met Pat Foster, who was in the hospital bed next to hers. The pair created Child Find Ontario in 1983, which was one of the first NIKKI WESLEY / OAKVILLE BEAVER MISSING CHILD UPDATE: Barbara Snider (left), an international investigator with the Missing Children Society of Canada, sheds a tear as she looks at a current photo of 18-year-old Alex Medjed, on his mother Angelina's camera following a celebration of Snider's 25 years as a missing child investigator. and advocate. Medjed is one of the hundreds of people Snider has helped to reunite with a loved one. She reunited Medjed with her son Alex on Mother's Day seven years ago after he had been taken across the globe to Yugoslavia for a year and two weeks. non-profit organizations dedicated to finding and preventing missing children in Canada. Public speaking to raise money and fingerprinting children at weekend clinics eventually expanded the vital program into a paid position that Snider held for 13 years. Eventually, Rhonda Morgan, executive director and founder of the Calgary-based Missing Children Society of Canada, recruited Snider to help with her organization in 1996. "Barb cares so deeply about getting the children home safely," said Morgan. Snider's first case was a three-year-old boy named Paul from Owen Sound, whose mother had abducted him. When observant electricians in British Columbia tipped off the RCMP about a young boy discovered living in a remote shack with no electricity or running water, Paul was rescued. Using all the legislative, investigative and collaborative tools at hand, she has managed many more successes to her long career. Considered one of Canada's pioneers in the search for missing children, the muchdecorated veteran is sought after for her expertise by professionals and law enforcement agencies in Canada. Her knowledge and expertise in these areas have earned -- as the awards on her office wall attest -- the reverence of her peers, which is also proven through the countless invitations to speak at national and international conferences, workshops, seminars and to researchers concerning child abduction. Over the years, Snider has worked with John Walsh from America's Most Wanted, dined with U.S. President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush, stayed for a weekend at Windsor Castle and has even been to Australia to inspect and safeproof the country's hospitals to prevent infant abductions. Snider is on call 24 hours daily, despite the sometimes-grueling episodes that flare up in living with the chronic autoimmune illness Lupus. Crises such as Snider deals with don't happen between typical office hours. "It gets in your blood," said Snider. She is still hopeful that her advocacy work at the federal government level will pay off to offer financial support for parents victimized by custodial abduction. Lawyer's fees, travel expenses, debts and living costs, even the rescinding of child benefits are some of the extraneous money challenges these parents face. Upon reunification, even getting provincial health care cards reinstated becomes a court case. For its part as a registered charity, the Missing Children Society of Canada relies on fundraising through an annual Happy Endings gala, a golf tournament and private donors. "It's such a satisfying job that is sometimes extremely difficult but we are making a difference and it is very rewarding," said Snider. It's work in which collaboration makes greater inroads toward success and one wrong move could screw up a reunification. "No one person can do this work alone. We all have to work together," said Snider. 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