Happy ending.(The Goodness Of America)

At about 7:15 p.m. on January 21, Katharine Whitney of Sandy, Utah, left her workplace with six-week-old daughter Elizabeth Kay to attend a baby shower. After placing the infant in a car seat, she realized that she had forgotten the shower gift and hurried inside the building to retrieve it. When she returned less than a minute later, the car--and little Elizabeth--were gone.

Whitney called police, and within minutes an AMBER (America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response) Alert was issued. The alerts are named for Amber Hagerman, a nine-year-old Arlington, Texas, girl who was abducted in 1996 and later found murdered. They promptly inform the public about kidnapped children and their abductors via radio and television bulletins and electronic highway signs. In Utah, the notifications are called Rachael Alerts, after Rachael Marie Runyan, a three-year-old Sunset, Utah, girl who was abducted and murdered in 1982.

Shane Wilkinson, a journeyman electrician and father of two small children, was enjoying dinner and watching television at home with his family in Draper (some five miles south of Sandy) when the AMBER Alert and details of Elizabeth's abduction were broadcast. "I really felt great concern for the Whitney family," he later recalled. "I had the strongest impression to go look for that little girl." Placing his unfinished dinner in the refrigerator, he hopped into his car and began ...