The Man Behind The Mission

My name is Mark R. Miller, son of  Russell and Irene Miller from Latrobe, Pennsylvania. I graduated from Saint Vincent College in 1981 with a Bachelor of  Science degree in Business Management. In 1982, I moved to Texas and gained work experience in a variety of different fields of  business. I experienced many challenges in the world of  business beginning in the mobile home industry. However, I persevered and was successful. I also worked briefly as a stockbroker and then became an entrepreneur, but my heart was elsewhere. I came across a missing child’s flyer at a grocery store and was driven to find out more information about this situation. After doing research, I found that missing children’s groups were only resource centers. They did not physically search for missing children; something needed to be done. I wanted to help missing children and make a difference; I felt the need to touch the lives of others in another way.

In 1987, I founded a missing children’s charity called the American Association For Lost Children, which would literally search for missing children by doing hands-on investigations at no cost to the parents. This was a major revolutionary idea.

Although the idea was revolutionary, the process of starting a charity without former experience was very, very difficult. One of the hardest things to do was to let the public know that we actually existed and to get them to believe in the dream that we had in our hearts. Hardly anyone knew about us because we didn’t have a track record. This meant that in the beginning, I had to use my own life savings to fund the charity. The process of getting our name out to the public and before the parents of missing children was a long and slow process. It didn’t happen overnight. In the beginning we didn’t have cases to work on because nobody knew we were out there and available to help them.

As my personal funds were diminishing, we begged for donations on the streets, had numerous car washes and sold M&Ms at grocery stores and intersections. Over a time period of three years, we sold an estimated 55,000 boxes of M&Ms.

As we struggled to pay our monthly office rent, gas, telephone, and utilities, we were also struggling to raise funds to finance the investigation of cases, such as rent-a-car fees, airfare, hotel expense, gas, and food. This was one of the times when we encountered serious financial difficulty. I could not even afford to pay myself a small salary. During these difficult times, I had to surrender my car since I did not have money to make payments. I did not even have money to pay rent, so for more than two years I slept on the floor where the AAFLC was housed. I believed that as we found more children, someone would recognize us and come to our rescue, but it did not happen that way.

Finally, as we persevered, people saw the determination and faith in our hearts as more children were recovered. With additional media coverage, the number of volunteers increased. When people realized the unselfishness of our mission, they were more than willing to help.