TAZEWELL, Va. -The Tazewell Moose Lodge hosted an event with free pizza, toys, and, most importantly, IDs that kids and their families could get from the Tazewell County Sheriff’s Department.
However, these weren’t your average ID cards, but a new form of identification called an “EZ-Child ID” that’s all stored on a flash drive.
Lt. Landon Hieatt with the Tazewell County Sheriff’s Department says it has several advantages over a card, including being able to hold all ten fingerprints.
“…Easy to access, it doesn’t fade like physical cards can if you leave them in the sun or… They can also hold multiple siblings on one flash drive, so that makes it much easier to keep everything together in one spot. Not only that, but this does have the capability of recording your child’s voice, record them speaking and give them certain questions so that way, we can hear their voice, so we know what they sound like.” says Lt. Hieatt.
Lt. Hieatt says he loves the community’s response to the new IDs, with many families coming out to take part.
“I think it’s an excellent idea. It’s easier to keep up with…” says Lois Wallace Ingram, one mother at the event, “…kids change as time goes on, they look different, they grow, all those kinds of things, and so it’s important to keep up with all that.”
This was all made possible thanks to the Moose Lodge in Tazewell, with the lodge members donating the EZ-child ID machine to the Sheriff’s Department, thanks to a partnership with the “Safe Surfin’ Foundation.”
Adam East, an operations manager with Moose International, says this technology has already been used to save lives.
“…If you go to Safe Surfin’s website, you’ll see different instances where the kit has actually saved lives. One that I can think of recently, I don’t know the child’s name, but they went missing, the mother had just been to a safe surfing event, and she went home, and got the thumb drive, and I think it was within 6 or 8 hours they found the child safe and without harm and that’s because of the Child-ID event that they had went to,” says East.
Lieutenant Hieatt encourages parents and guardians to get one of these new IDs for their own children and adds that it’s important to get one once a year to keep up with your child’s changing appearance.
If you would like to get one of these EZ-Child IDs for your own kids, Lieutenant Hieatt and East say they plan to hold events like these again.
In the meantime, you can contact the Tazewell County Sheriff’s Department to arrange a time to make one or contact the Safe Surfin’ Foundation to find another machine nearest to you.
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