21 missing kids rescued across Lee, Collier and Hendry counties

FORT MYERS, Fla. (WINK) — A three-day operation brought 21 missing children home to Southwest Florida.

The National Child Protection Task Force led a multi-agency effort this week to find missing and at-risk youth across Lee, Collier and Hendry counties.

More than 145 people worked together across local, state and federal agencies to track down the children.

WINK News reporter Haley Zarcone attended the press conference in Estero and was there when another child was found.

Each time a child was located, a bell rang out at the operation's base.

"Everyone is sitting around, kind of anxiously waiting for that bell to ring," said Alicia Shannon of the Children's Advocacy Center of Southeast Florida.

The bell rang 21 times over three days.

The search took investigators well beyond Southwest Florida.

"Last night we were going until 10 o'clock at night, trying to find a particular child that we had been, you know, tracking across the state. Actually, she was recovered in Hillsborough County," said Lt. Wade Williams of the Collier County Sheriff's Office.

Williams said the search extended even further in some cases.

"We have some kids that recovered out of state, one and potentially in another country that we're working on," Williams said.

Al Rollins of the National Child Protection Task Force described the team behind the effort.

"We have the detectives or the agencies who own the case, we have open source analyst, we have intelligence analysts, we have crime analysts from different agencies, we have our federal partners," Rollins said.

Once found, the children were brought back to Southwest Florida and placed in the care of local partners like the Children's Advocacy Center.

"We definitely give them clothing, a shower, we give them a space that's low light, very calming. And then when they're ready to talk, we start sending our different services in," Shannon said.

Williams said many of the children found were teenagers and that technology played a major role in putting them at risk.

"Electronics is a big problem, and social media is a big problem for kids, and really anything that they can connect on the internet, where they can connect with other people, is a problem," Williams said.

Williams added that the reasons children go missing often come down to one thing.

"We find that kids are typically running from something or they're running to something," Williams said.

With all 21 children now found, officials say the focus shifts to keeping them safe and helping them rebuild their lives.

With this operation complete, NCPTF has now helped locate more than 218 endangered missing children through coordinated Missing Child Rescue Operations nationwide.