The Saturday before Christmas will be filled with last-minute preparations, but Jeannie Sage is hoping parents will make time that day to hear a message that could mean the difference between life and death.
Sage and Daniel Obusek, martial arts instructor and child safety expert, will be at the Monongahela fire hall, Main Street, from 10 to noon Saturday to offer a free stranger-danger workshop and seminar.
Sage teamed up with Obusek, her 3-year-old son Jonathon's karate instructor, after she shared with him a frightening experience.
In September the Sages moved from Houston, Texas, to Monongahela. Within the first hour in their new home, Jonathon disappeared. Jeannie was working in the kitchen with her 2-year-old daughter, Alexis, while her husband, Ronny, was outside the house with Jonathon.
"And the next thing we knew he was gone," she recalled. "I told my husband, 'I can't find Jonathon.' And then we searched the whole house, but there were boxes everywhere.
"We searched the whole house 10 times over," said Sage, remembering her husband began searching outside and alerting the neighbors.
The police and firefighters got involved and were joined by a number of volunteers who heard the news and wanted to help.
The search ended 21/2 hours later when Monongahela Police Officer Robert Boyer searched the house one more time and found Jonathon curled up asleep inside a side drawer in a computer desk.
"I looked at it like a big wake-up call -- like what if this really had happened?" Sage said. "This has totally changed my life. There's no age too young to begin.
"That's when we got the idea of trying to prevent it from happening and the whole goal is to make children aware of what to do if a stranger comes up to them."
Monongahela Police Officer Pete Rocco was on duty that day and remembers searching for the boy. "These programs are invaluable, especially to the little ones," Rocco said. "These programs are worth their weight in gold."
In addition to playing out scenarios, Obusek plans to talk to kids about ways to identify strangers and tips on what to do to prevent an abduction in the first place.
A few of these tips are:
Sage wants this seminar to be just the beginning. "Hopefully it's not going to stop with just this one seminar," she said.
She hopes to take the information to schools and organizations such as the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts.
"It's not enough to just say, 'Don't talk to strangers,'" Sage said.
"I always took it for granted that I was going to be there (for my kids.) It never crossed my mind to instill this in them -- the prevention and what to do," Sage said. "I can't protect them all the time. They need to learn to protect themselves."
For more information or to volunteer, call 724-379-4010.
