Wal-Mart

executives visited the Fayette Pavilion store

last week along with representatives of the

National Center for Missing and Exploited

Children to make a special presentation and

commemorate the recent recovery of two missing

children right here in Fayette County.

Tom

Montgomery, head of Wal-mart's Good Works

program, presented a check for $150,000 to NCMEC

president Ernie Allen as dozens of Wal-Mart

employees cheered the recent success of the

retail giant's partnership with the center.

For

the past three years, posters of missing children

have been displayed in about 2,400 Wal-Mart

stores and 450 SAM's Clubs nationwide. A total of

2,107 children have been featured since January

1996, and more than 1,100 of those have been

located.

Allen

said last week that 31 of those recoveries can be

directly attributed to Wal-Mart's participation

in the program, which struck paydirt locally a

few months ago.

man working at a construction site in the area

noticed for several days that two young boys

accompanied another man to the site every day.

Realizing that the boys were not in school

anywhere, he became suspicious about the

situation.

Then

one day in November, he walked into the Wal-Mart

at Fayette Pavilion and saw pictures of the two

boys, who were missing from their home in

Virginia, having possibly been taken by their

father.

The

man contacted authorities, and the youths

reunited with their mother Nov. 10.

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