On television, Tim Kang solves crimes as a California Bureau of Investigation agent.
Now, he’s trying stop crime in real life, too.
Kang, who plays agent Kimball Cho on “The Mentalist,” is acting as a spokesman for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children‘s “Take 25” campaign. The campaign encourages parents to take 25 minutes to talk with their children about safety and offers tips for doing so.
May 25 is National Missing Children’s Day, and this month the center is promoting the campaign — which urges parents to discuss with their kids how to stay safe at home, on the Internet, at school and in their neighborhood.
Kang said his daughter’s birth in November 2009 bolstered his desire to get involved with NCMEC. He wants to get other parents talking about safety issues.
“We don’t like to talk about these things,” he told The Washington Examiner. “Parents want to sweep it under the bus and say, ‘This is never going to happen to us.'”
Take 25, Kang said, is a “relatively benign” way to start safety discussions “without scaring the pants off of people.”
The tips include teaching children to make a scene if someone tries to grab them, instructing them when and how to use 911, and talking about privacy settings on social networks.
Getting people used to talking about these issues, Kang hopes, will keep kids safe and make NCMEC’s work more well-known.
“Take 25 is a small commitment,” he said. “It’s not asking a lot, and you’re going to get a lot more in return.”
The center says reviewing safety measures with children can prevent crime. In more than 80 percent of attempted abductions, the child escaped through their own actions, such as running away, yelling or attracting attention, according to a NCMEC analysis.
“We know teaching children about safety works,” Ernie Allen, the organization’s chief executive, said.
