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On October 5, 2012, at 8:30 a.m., 10-year-old Jessica Ridgeway left her house to walk to Witt Elementary School in the northwest Denver, Colorado suburb of Westminster. Her mother, Sarah Ridgeway, worked a night shift and slept through a call from the school. Sarah awoke to find a message that her daughter hadn’t made it to Witt; she reported Jessica missing at 4:30 p.m. On October 10, Jessica’s remains were found in the neighboring suburb of Arvada.

Since her abduction, a number of measures have been introduced to honor Jessica and help safeguard and uplift the children of Colorado, including a fund in Jessica's name. Now, two years after her death, former University of Colorado football player and child safety advocate John Guydon intends to further the cause through a crowdsourcing app.

Guydon is the CEO and co-founder of Lassy Project, a startup based in Boulder aiming to leverage technology to generate safer neighborhoods. Lassy Project, which recently became available in the App Store, allows parents and guardians to determine if their children have strayed and notify a group of members of their local community if their child goes missing.

“When Jessica was killed, it really hit home for me. I cannot imagine the helplessness that a parent feels in a situation like that,” said Guydon. “It was also frustrating and I thought there has to be a better way to find lost kids. Everyone was itching to help, so what if we could mobilize the masses with something we use every day: our phones. Lassy Project was born.”

The app has already shown substantive promise in the tech world. Last month, Lassy Project graduated from Boulder’s TechStars startup accelerator program, a three-month, mentorship-driven workshop that accepts fewer than 1% of its applicants, according to Inc.com (in 2012, only 14 of the 1,480 submissions made the cut). The program also furnished the company with $118,000 in seed funding and the free Lassy Project app was launched in the App Store.

“The TechStars program has been incredibly beneficial to Lassy Project and our team,” Guydon said. “We came into the TechStars program intent on solving a problem. We came out of the Techstars program with a clear and solid path to follow in order to do that. I cannot thank TechStars enough for their unwavering support and guidance.”

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To use Lassy Project, a parent or guardian can create an account for his or her child. The parent/guardian inputs the child’s, or “Lassy’s,” name, phone number, and physical characteristics (hair color, height, etc.) and uploads a photo. He or she then maps an anticipated route for the child to follow, including starting point (such as home), destination (such as school), and the path to get there. This route will be tracked as long as the child has his or her own smartphone (parents/guardians interested in using the app should take note of this caveat). The app must then be installed on the child’s phone to activate route tracking.

If the child strays too far from the route, the app notifies the parent/guardian, who then has the option to call the child. If this fails, the parent/guardian can notify a local community of adult Lassy Project users (a “Lassy Village”), who will receive alerts through the app and, ideally, spring to action.

Servicing over 7,500 users throughout the country, Lassy Project has assisted with six AMBER alerts and is endorsed by 13 U.S. police departments. The startup currently employs six and plans to release a Web app that will grant access for users without smartphones, as well as enhanced functionality that will allow deeper integration into schools, communities, law enforcement, and city government.

With Lassy Project, Guydon hopes to prevent families in Colorado, and eventually throughout the country, from experiencing the emotional ravagement of a lost child. He noted, “This is what will ultimately create the strongest deterrent to child abductions because it is woven into the fabric of society and communicates that our communities are strong and committed to protecting our kids.”