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Wood Wheaton Honda to host Operation Kidsafe for a year

A Prince George automobile dealership is also going to be home to a child-safety service for the next year. Starting on Saturday at 10 a.m.
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A Prince George automobile dealership is also going to be home to a child-safety service for the next year.

Starting on Saturday at 10 a.m., parents can bring their children to the Honda Wood Wheaton Supercentre at 2500 Range Road to get a document holding their digital fingerprints and photo at no cost.

Called Operation Kidsafe, the service was developed by Mark Bott, whose credentials include working with John Walsh of America's Most Wanted and helping start the Amber Alert.

In the 17 years it's been running, more than one million children have gone through the process which takes about a minute.

No one is registered or put on a database, Bott stressed in a telephone interview from his office in Springfield, Illinois. The parent simply takes the information home and, if needed, provides it to law enforcement.

"We're probably handing the parent a form they're never going to use and that's the hope," Bott said.

That's particularly if parents and their children follow the safety tips provided on the back, which Bott described as the "big value" of the form.

One of those tips is to "check first."

"A five, six, seven-year-old, you teach him one strategy," Bott said. "If anyone approaches you and asks you to go anywhere or do anything, you run."

He also noted that in about 80 per cent of the crimes committed against children, the culprit is someone the child knows or perceives as endorsed by the adults.

Bott declined to provide any more of the tips, saying that would keep some parents from going to the bother of taking their children through the process.

Honda Wood Wheaton service manager Levi Allan said the dealership has sponsored the equipment for a year.

Don't worry, no one will try to sell you a car while you're there. Allan said the step was taken "pretty much to give back to the community that's given us the opportunity to grow" and recalled the strong response when a similar feature was set up some years ago at a Wood Wheaton dealership.

"The amount of people who came in to get the service done was incredible," Allan said. "It showed a high value, so bring that event to this day and age, where you don't have to freeze the fingerprints inside of the freezer anymore, it's a digital copy and the only record out there goes to the parents, it really becomes a no brainer."