NASHVILLE, TN – Every summer has its hot new fad and this year is no exception. In 2002, the whole nation is going crazy for the newest summer craze: child abduction. Missing children and their alleged kidnappers have been headline news from the start of summer and things don’t look to be slowing down any time soon.

“I totally can’t believe how crazy we all are for child abductions right now. I mean everywhere you look there’s a missing kid, or someone stealing a kid or a kid just found. The other day a kid was lost, found, lost and found again, all in the same day. I love it! It’s so exciting and makes for such good TV. It’s really making for a great summer,” said Marsha Gentry, mother of three.

Parents across the country are hoping that they might be lucky enough to have one, if not all of their children abducted by strangers or relatives before the summer is over.

“Oh yeah, we’ve thought about that a lot,” said Gary Reece, father of two. “We’ve even started hiring shady contractors to do work on our house and making our kids walk home from school all alone. The other day we left one of the kids at the mall. Unfortunately he was still there when we went back a couple hours later. But rest assured when it finally happens, we’ll be ready. In fact, the Mrs. and I already have our first two press conference speeches written out and I know a couple people down at News 14 in case one of our babies gets kidnapped. So I guess we’re just playing the waiting game right now and hoping that something happens soon. If nothing happens then we just might have to go and do it ourselves.”

Although child abductions are actually on a decrease, the publicity each case is receiving has sky rocketed.

“Missing kids is big news right now. Big news,” said Nashville NBC affiliate anchor Jeff Weir. “Last year it was the XFL, this years it’s missing kids. We here at the network have set up a hotline for parents who may be missing a child. If things are all set and looking good – and by that I mean the family is relatively good looking and camera friendly, the kid is cute and they have a picture of a creepy looking suspect – then we jump all over the story. There was this one, man is was great… this one guy who had the total child molester motif going snatched this kid, right, I mean he had the goatee, the mullet, the broken down van and the crazy eyes, it was perfect. Too bad they found the kid that night though, we could’ve milked that one for another week or so.”

Child abductors themselves are soaking in all the attention they can with some first time child abductors kidnapping children just to get their 15 minutes of fame.

“I’ve always wanted to be famous, and since I couldn’t get on TV, I figured now was the time to make my move,” said child abductor and aspiring actor Edward Brock. “When I didn’t make the cut for ‘The Real World’ or ‘Teen Idol,’ I saw child abduction as my only option. And it worked. Just this morning I signed a deal with the Lifetime Television Network for my life story. And I even get to play myself. Production’s going to start in about three years… two and a half if I’m good.”

Even law enforcement officials are jumping on the bandwagon as detectives and investigators spend more and more time on television discussing details of missing children cases.

“This summer has been great for me. So far I’ve been on three missing kid cases and I’ve had about 13 hours total of TV time. At first I was kinda awkward and looked like crap but I’ve been working out and working on my delivery so lately my tapes are much better. I’ve even been getting a little bit of fan mail. Being on TV is harder than I thought. It’s a lot harder than being a detective, that’s for damn sure,” said Los Angeles Police Department Detective Gary Fritschi.