Help for little wanderers

In August of 2002, Alyssa Dver walked into Fenway Park with her son and niece and panicked.

"I had one child in each hand, saw 4 bazillion people, and the dark creepy crevices behind the concession stands," Dver said. Both children were 3, and Dver was consumed with one terrifying thought: What if they got lost?

Dver wrote her cellphone number on a piece of paper and tucked it into her son's pocket. She knelt down and instructed him: "If you get lost, try to remember that this is in here and have someone call me."

Next was her niece. Dver had a second slip of paper but the little girl, dressed in sundress and sandals, had no place to put it. "Put it in my underwear, Aunt Lyss, " she suggested.

"I don't think so," Dver responded, then sat nervously throughout the game with a hand on each child. When she got home she called around for advice on what she should do next time she was in such a situation. No one seemed to have an answer.

That was the "Ah-ha" moment, as Dver calls it.

Now the 37-year-old Ashland resident runs Wander Wear, which sells clip-on Parent Locator Tags listing contact information -- human luggage tags of sorts. The company also offers brightly colored T-shirts and hats designed to stand out in a crowd.

Dver's credit-card size tags sell for $4 each, less in bulk. So far she says she's sold 25,000 of them.

While it has a strong clip, Dver advises parents to attach the tag to the back of their child's shirt, between the shoulder blades. That will keep it out of reach of fidgety hands.

"Soon they will forget it's even there," said Dver.

A marketing executive for nearly two decades, Dver said that before launching Wander Wear she spent a year researching child safety. She said she interviewed people at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Massachusetts Safety Officers League, and she surveyed other mothers.

She also consulted her husband, Jeff, a special needs teaching assistant at Hopkins Elementary School in Hopkinton .

She is putting her research in child safety to work by giving talks at stores, schools, and meetings of community groups.

"People need to be educated and they don't get that when they walk into a store or open up a catalog," she said. "The irony is that there's so much on the market today" for recovering children, like DNA, dental kits, fingerprinting, and videotaping, she said, " but is it going to be helpful when you're standing in the mall or in Disneyland and your kid's gone?"

Dver, whose sons are ages 3 and 7, welcomes the challenge of juggling family life with her many other enterprises.

"I like to have options in my hand," she said, suggesting that her parents' divorce may have something to do with that. She recalled watching her mother suffer "because she didn't have the financial freedom to go about her life.

"You get that bug in you that you have to be self-sufficient at all costs."

Alyssa Dver will speak Nov. 14 at Isis Maternity in Needham, 781-429-1500; Nov. 16 before the Bellingham/Medway Moms Club at Bellingham Public Library, 617-448-6147; and Nov. 29 at the Milford Family Network, Milford, 508-482-0700 (ext. 0525) . Call for times and reservations. For more information on Wander Wear, visit wander-wear.com

Around the towns: The first annual Jordan Bennett Weiss Basketball Tournament raised more than $ 2,000 to promote diabetes awareness. Held at the Boys and Girls Club of Newton, it was named for the 10-year-old son of Marc and Sara Weiss of Newton, who died of the disease. For more information log onto jbwfund.org . . . . Maryanne Sannicandro of Hopedale has been named executive director of Forge Hill Senior Living Community in Franklin. . . . At their 15th a nnual Leading Women Awards, the Girl Scouts Patriots' Trail Council honored Una Ryan of Newton . She is the CEO and president of Avant Immunotherapeutics, Inc. in Needham. . . . Joelle M. Kanshepolsky of Newton has been appointed vice president of development for the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Mass/Metrowest in Framingham.

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