Code Adam

Code Adam is a "missing child" safety program in the United States and Canada, originally created by Wal-Mart retail stores in 1994. It is named in memory of Adam Walsh, the 6-year-old son of John Walsh (the host of Fox's America's Most Wanted). Adam was abducted from a Sears department store in Florida in 1981 and was never found. Today, many department stores, retail shops, shopping malls, supermarkets, amusement parks, hospitals and museums participate in the Code Adam program. Legislation enacted by Congress in 2003 now mandates that all federal office buildings employ the program.

Wal-Mart along with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and the departments of several state Attorneys General, has offered to assist in training workshops in order for other companies to implement the program. Social scientists point out that the fear of child abduction is out of all proportion to its incidence: in particular they point to the long-term persistence of retail kidnapping narratives in urban legends to highlight how parents have been sensitized to this issue for generations before the Adam Walsh case.