Coborn’s program helps find kids (St. Cloud Times)

Coborn’s Inc. has been honored for helping to find missing children through a bag program.

Advance Polybag Inc., a Houston-based plastic bag manufacturer, recently gave Coborn’s nine plaques — each representing a child who was found after appearing on the grocer’s bags.

“It’s to let them know how effective the program has been,” said Vic Platta, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for API.

API prints pictures of local missing children, a physical description and information about the abduction on the back of its plastic grocery bags. The information is printed at the request of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. It changes every two months.

API covers the production costs and encourages its retail customers to participate in the bag program.

“Coborn’s has been pleased to participate in this program to help find missing children,” said Andy Knoblauch, Coborn’s senior vice president of sales and marketing, in a news release. He accepted the awards on behalf of Coborn’s.

“Our customers use more than 45 million bags a year, so we know those images are getting out there. Coborn’s values kids and we will continue doing our part to help keep them safe.”

Coborn’s was the first supermarket to participate in API’s bag program. Since it joined in 1998, Coborn’s has received 15 plaques from API for helping to find 16 missing children.

Coborn’s distributes the bags at its 32 Coborn’s and Cash Wise stores in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota.

API started the program in 1998 after Vic Platta brought the idea of printing information on missing children on plastic grocery bags to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

The company targets smaller retailers to participate in the program because those retailers can control their inventory and distribute the bags printed with the missing children in the areas where the children were abducted.

Coborn’s is among four retailers that participate in the bag program.

Plaques representing each of the 36 missing children who have been found hang in the company’s manufacturing facility.

“It’s reinforcement that we’re doing something good,” Platta said.

API started in 1986 and is among the world’s largest manufacturer of polyethylene bags. It has manufacturing plants in Louisiana and Oklahoma and sales offices in Chicago, Columbus, Philadelphia, Las Vegas and New Orleans.

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children serves as a national clearinghouse for information and a resource center for child protection. The center, started in 1984, has worked with law enforcement on 98,000 missing child cases, resulting in the recovery of 83,000 children.