VICTORVILLE CA For a parent, few things are scarier than a missing child.
Just ask Victorville resident Cindi Stone, whose runaway daughter turned up Friday, about two weeks after she disappeared.
Julie "Jewels" Ann Baker, 16, doesn't like to say much about her disappearance, but her mother does.
Had it not been for a new Web site called BeyondMissing.com, her daughter might still be missing, Stone said Tuesday. The site, established by the father of murder victim Polly Klaas, enables parents to create missing-person fliers by scanning in a photo and filling in preset fields with appropriate information about height, weight, coloring, etc.
"It's a wonderful tool," Stone said, "and people need to know about it because when your child is missing, as a parent you feel helpless, and this enables you to do something. It literally only took two minutes to create (a flier), and that's precious time when you're trying to find a child."
Marc Klaas, who devised the site, underwent his own terrifying ordeal when his 12-year-old daughter disappeared for months in 1993. She was taken from her home in Petaluma by a felon who later was convicted of murdering her.
"When these kids disappear, they're disappearing at about a-mile-a-minute," Klaas said. "As you start losing time, your chances of recovering the child start rapidly diminishing."
That's why she contacted Klaas, Stone said, and became the first person to use his site.
After creating the flier from the Web site, Stone made 500 copies that she and friends distributed from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.
"I was a basket case, but I'm not the kind of person to sit around and do nothing," Stone said. "Creating the flier myself gave me hope that I would find her. It made me feel like I was doing something and it kept me busy."
Julie ran away from her father's Las Vegas home Feb 15. Authorities thought she might be in Victorville, where her mother lives, said San Bernardino County sheriff's Detective Gina Perez.
An anonymous caller tipped the Sheriff's Department to Julie's whereabouts at about the same time the girl called home, said Stone, who believes the caller had seen one of her fliers.
The teen said a friend drove her from Nevada to Victorville, where she stayed with friends until Friday, when deputies showed up.
Julie said she saw the missing-person fliers with her face on them all over town, but that no one seemed to recognize her as the girl on the flier.
Since Julie has been home, Stone and her daughter have been spending time getting reacquainted.
"I still don't know why she was gone so long without calling," Stone said. "But no words that I can tell you I just feel so happy that she's safe."