Chelsea King Facebook Page: Helping to Find Chelsea King

Chelsea King went missing on Thursday, February 25. Within hours, hundreds of people, volunteers and local law enforcement and rescue workers were scouring the area around Lake Hodges and the Rancho Bernardo Community Park in southern California, the last place Chelsea King was believed to have been. Within a few more hours, Chelsea King's name and missing status was not only a local story but also being passed around through blogs, social networking sites, and internet news sites around the world.

Social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter are becoming increasingly important meeting places for people to share and/or disseminate information about a topic. In the case of Chelsea King, there exists a couple of common interest pages on Facebook for those following the missing person case of the 17-year-old Poway High School senior. One, "Help Find Chelsea King: Missing San Diego Teen," has garnered over 52,000 fans in a couple days. The main page runs updates on pertinent information about the case and contains a "fans" link where others can share stories and articles or leave comments.

In any given endeavor, the more one (or a number of ones) has access to information, the more accessible a potential solution may become. And in the case of missing persons like Chelsea King, Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter (and others) have simply become information sharing platforms from which others can share, discuss, and inject. Although those same sites are used primarily for whiling away the hours in pointless communication, they can be useful in gathering together a group of volunteers at a certain time and place as well as offering the latest press release from law enforcement agencies. The pages can be not only a source of information for the public (locally and anywhere in the world) but a source of information that could in some ways provide necessary support and/or leads to investigators.

Twitter, despite its frivolous appellation, has become quite the useful information disseminator in its own right. Its brief format (140 characters or less) has allowed it to be a quick communicator, not only of immediate information, but of pictures and more substantive information (like websites, articles, photo files, etc.). The death of a spectator in the protests following the Iranian election last year proved that Twitter could be a quick and easy way to spread the word of revolution and popular dissent.

Twitter can also quickly help gather and coordinate a large group of volunteers in a search effort. Or allow someone to communicate something of interest.

Not into Twitter? Text it. Post it to a webpage. Have information regarding Chelsea King's case? Post it online on one of the networking sites (if important case-sensitive information, please notify San Diego authorities at . Have an interesting article or the latest update on the arrest of John Albert Gardner and/or the investigation? Post it online to Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter.

Of course, given the democratic nature of the sites, one still has to suffer the fools who think that everything is a forum for their inanities, perversities and asininities, but, all in all, the social networking sites can be avenues of serious information sharing and discussion.

Chelsea King went missing Thursday afternoon, February 25. Her cell phone, school clothes, and iPod were found in her locked car at Rancho Bernardo Community Park by her father later that afternoon. Authorities were notified that Chelsea had gone missing and quick searches were organized and turned up nothing. An Amber Alert was not issued because there was no obvious evidence that foul play or an abduction had taken place. However, as time went by and Chelsea King did not return home or contact friends and/or family, and given that the straight-A student had no history of trouble or of running away, the FBI joined the investigation on the assumption that the 17-year-old had been abducted.

Although massive search efforts had not resulted in Chelsea being found, items of interest eventually led San Diego authorities to arrest a convicted sex offender, John Albert Gardner III, Sunday afternoon for "possible involvement" in the teen's disappearance. Gardner was questioned and is being held, pending charges. San Diego Sheriff Bill Gore told reporters Sunday that searches had turned up physical evidence that connected him to the investigation but the sheriff did not elaborate. He did say that John Gardner may also be involved in an assault on a jogger that occurred in December and could even be connected to the disappearance of Amber Dubois, a 14-year-old that went missing from Escondido on her way to school in February 2009.

But Chelsea King remains missing. The investigation and the searches continue...

As the saying goes, information is power. And it might be powerful enough to save a life and help bring a missing girl safely home.

Then the Facebook page can be titled "Chelsea King Found..."

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To join, help, comment, support, or browse, go to "Find Chelsea King: Missing San Diego Teen" on Facebook.

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Source:

Facebook.com