very year thousands of children go missing. Many of these children are found a short while later due to the selfless efforts of law enforcement agencies and other organizations. Unfortunately, thousands of children remain missing every year. The main reason is that as their profiles fade from the news and flyers, the leads quickly dry up. When the public stops looking, the chance of recovering a missing child decreases substantially.

The solution came to our founder, Dennis Bair, when he was a minor league pitcher with the Chicago Cubs. Dennis spent many years in baseball stadiums, and he realized the power of these venues in the search for missing kids. As he looked at an autographed poster of Steelers great and 4-time super bowl champ, Rocky Bleier, he realized that if the profile of a missing child would be inset in that poster, he would have kept it for years and would never have forgotten that child’s face. We started out by having poster giveaways at minor league baseball games, between 2001 and 2010, with inset missing children profiles. In 2011, we launched our “BringHome100” campaign, in which we presented the challenge of bringing 100 of our featured children home. That same year, BairFind became an official 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and forged a brief partnership with the Pittsburgh Pirates, who provided a full page ad in their 2012 season game program as well as space in their stadium for our very first concourse sign, that was affixed to a stone wall near the right field rotunda entrance. Rocky Bleier, whose picture sparked the revolution to find missing children, was also added to BairFindʼs board of directors as our Vice President.

In 2012, Bleier along with Pittsburgh Pirates star second baseman Neil Walker and longtime Pirates broadcast announcer Steve Blass, recorded a public service announcement that was featured on the big screen at Pirates home games, directing fans to the concourse sign and program. The Pittsburgh Steelers also donated a concourse sign, marking BairFindʼs entry into one more high profile professional sports league. On July 2, 2012, Corey O’Connor and the Council of the City of Pittsburgh awarded the BairFind Foundation with a proclamation announcing July 2 as “BringHome100 Day”.

A major breakthrough occurred in 2013 in a kidnapping case involving a young woman named Gina DeJesus, who was featured on BairFind’s website and stadium signs for many years. Dennis and his helpers had been working closely with the DeJesus family in their search. Gina, along with two other women were successfully rescued from a Cleveland home, in a story that became national news for weeks. Dennis Bair was featured on several local Pittsburgh television and radio stations, newspapers and online blogs. Our newest partner is the family of Jacksonville, FL missing boy Mark Degner, whose photo is featured on our concourse sign at the Jacksonville Suns’ stadium, and in ten additional stadiums along the East Coast of the United States.

During the 2014 and 2015 seasons, BairFind launched its Concourse Sign Project, placing wooden A-frame signs featuring local missing children in 40 MiLB stadiums throughout the Florida State League, Southern League and New York-Penn League, with an additional request coming from the South Atlantic League. As a result of our project’s effectiveness and overwhelmingly positive reception by league presidents, team GM’s, front office personnel and fans, BairFind was named an Official Charity Partner of Minor League Baseball at the 2015 Winter Meetings in Nashville, Tennessee. We have been given the special designation of “Homegrown” charity, based on Dennis’ playing career, and having originated our program in the Minor Leagues. AMI Graphics, the Official Stadium Signage Supplier to Minor League Baseball, has teamed up with us to create our signs. To date, more than 300 of our featured children have been successfully located and brought home, and our Concourse Sign Project is now implemented in 139 Minor League Baseball stadiums across the country, garnering over 40 million views on missing child profiles. BairFind also relocated to Jacksonville, Florida, and in September of 2016 was awarded a Jacksonville City Council Resolution introduced by Councilman Bill Gulliford, honoring and commending our efforts to search for and find missing children nationwide.

Included in our future endeavors, the BairFind Foundation looks to provide leadership in the development of education and prevention programs, and the use of technology to further public engagement in bringing and keeping more kids home. As our founder says, “When a child goes missing, we should not look away out of fear. We should recognize it as a challenge, and do whatever we can to take part in the search, and rise to the challenge of safely locating the child.”

“Dennis Bair has created something that is absolutely inspiring. BairFind is the wave of the future in the search for missing children. He will most definitely find missing children.” – Dennis Esken, Foremost Baseball Glove Expert (featured on ESPN’s “Outside the Lines”)