| In the interest of speed and timeliness, this story is fed directly from the Associated Press newswire and may contain spelling or grammatical errors. |
PETALUMA, Calif. (AP) Ten years ago, Petaluma's country calm was shattered when a violent parolee broke into the bedroom of Polly Klaas and stole away the 12-year-old girl, along with a community's peace of mind.
On Wednesday, some of the people who helped search for Polly paused to remember their loss and take stock of the campaign to help other missing children that has been waged in her name.
``Ten years ago today, I was a desperate man,'' Polly's father, Marc Klaas, said to about 75 volunteers and others involved in the case who gathered in downtown Petaluma. ``We ... were a very frightened family. You gave us hope and you gave us strength to endure.''
Polly was kidnapped from her bedroom as she played with two girlfriends at a slumber party on Oct. 1, 1993.
The attack, made while Polly's mother, Eve Nichol, slept in the next room, galvanized this city of about 45,000 residents. Within days, hundreds of volunteers had set up a search center standard procedure now, but then unprecedented.
Meanwhile, the circumstances of Polly's case two sheriff's deputies encountered her kidnapper that night but didn't know a manhunt was under way emphasized the need for speed in getting out information about child abductions.
Today, officials in California and other states broadcast information about missing children on radio, TV and roadside signs under the Amber Alerts named after Amber Hagerman, a 9-year-old Texas girl kidnapped and murdered in 1996.
In late November 1993, authorities caught up with Davis and in December he led them to Polly's body.
It was a heartbreaking end to the case. But some of the volunteers decided to keep working, forming the Polly Klaas Foundation to help other missing children.
On Wednesday, the foundation announced it was donating $40,000 to help provide child safety training to Petaluma children between ages 5 and 10, under a national program called radKIDS (Resist Aggression Defensively).
The foundation plans to train 36 instructors in its first year and hopes to offer the program at schools and other child-centered agencies.
Marc Klaas, who is not involved with the Polly Klaas Foundation and has his own nonprofit, the KlaasKids Foundation, announced Wednesday he is opening a new center in Florida that will help coordinate searches for missing children. In another initiative, his Web site has been translated into Spanish.
Klaas spoke in front of the Polly Hannah Klaas Performing Arts Center, a 1910 building in downtown Petaluma that was named after Polly but later had to be closed because it was unsafe. Civic officials are trying to raise money for repairs, which could cost $1 million, and are just under halfway to their goal.
Family members say having a theater under Polly's name would be a sweet tribute she loved drama and music.
Klaas and Nichol divorced when Polly was a toddler, but she often visited Klaas and his then-fiancee, now wife, Violet.
In a recent interview, Klaas said some of his best memories come from the near-daily phone conversations he had with Polly. Klaas said his last goodbye to Polly on one of those phone calls, though he didn't know it then.
One thing he's grateful for ``is that I always ended every conversation by telling her that I loved her. So that the last thing I ever said to her was that I loved her.''
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