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On Memorial Day this newspaper was proud to anchor its front page with coverage of the observance of the lives of those who fought and died for America.

There was another, more surprising part of that front page.

In its own way, it was a memorial.

A report that 21 young people are officially on the record book of law-enforcement agencies in Collier and Lee counties as missing came as a shock.

Memorial Day also was National Missing Children’s Day. With the story were photos of 18 of the 21 faces. They range in age from infants, such as Bryan Dos Santos-Gomez, the Baby Bryan who made headlines by being reported abducted by a knife-wielding stranger before Christmas 2006 in Fort Myers, to 6-year-old Adji Desir, who disappeared in Immokalee in January, to Wendy Hudakoc, who snuck out of the house for a party before Thanksgiving 1998 at the age of 14 and was never seen again.

Some cases may have been preventable. All had bad people involved. Some may still be solved — and law-enforcement agencies can be assured of whole-hearted public support in their often frustrating work.

The three photos missing from the printed lineup belong to children from Immokalee. There were no pictures to help authorities and concerned citizens locate them. Every family needs to have pictures for such eventualities, as painful as that possibility may be. When photomaking or fingerprinting events like the one at Coastland Center last month are held, please be there.

The community, whether that means Southwest Florida or the whole state, or the nation and world, also can use a more uniformed, systematic approach to public notification of a missing child. We have to make sure we do everything we can. Citizens are eager to help if they know who to look for and what to do.

Locally, we can work to make sure Southwest Florida does not get a reputation as a safe haven for predators. We cannot let the memories of our most precious resource stolen from our midst grow fuzzy over time. We have to keep that in focus.