Arushi Sharma | MISSING: The city's priorities

Once again cash-strapped, I took out time last week to calculate damages from my recently hectic social life.

Scowling at the Excel total in front of me, I pictured the new numbers that would soon appear as a result of Fling, performing-arts finales and frequent cases of the munchies. In short, I needed quick money.

A perusal of the daily headlines told me how to get it. All I had to do was find Scotty, a three-year-old German shepherd K-9, and return him to the Gloucester City Police. Five thousand seven hundred dollars straight in my pocket.

Rewind to March 26, the day I learned about Scotty from a Philadelphia Daily News headline. Wendy Ruderman reported that Jessica Paolini, a heroin addict from the suburbs, "checked out of a detox center last September" and has been missing ever since.

This fresh plea to find Paolini emerged parallel to the sensationalized search for Scotty. Ruderman captured the frustration expressed by Paolini's mother, Teri Appleton, who said, "I don't want to offend animal lovers, but isn't my daughter's life worth more than a dog's?"

As far as the police are concerned, it probably isn't. How can it be, in a world where Paolini is a statistic and Scotty, according to ABC News, is worth forty thousand dollars in training and police man-hours?

Appleton must have rested easier the night the Daily News picked up her daughter's story. Ruderman informed me that the mother had sent out countless requests to various media sources, all of whom were put off the minute Appleton said the word "drugs."

Ruderman took the story, but it was no easy job trying to justify its relevance for a headline. She recalled that upon receiving the press release, her editorial team "thought it was good" but they "almost put it in the trash" because if it was just another heroin story, no one would read it.

Ruderman then found herself calling law enforcement and drug experts, trying to "elevate" Paolini's story so that people would accept it as something different, or as she said, in the context of a "public service."

The public appeal strategy was a success. The article informed readers about the latest "No. 1 drug problem among young people" - the abuse of prescription drugs like OxyContin. Once kids are done "raiding their parents' medicine cabinet," Ruderman wrote, heroin becomes an available and affordable "Plan B" for teens.

Ruderman received numerous calls from parents who voiced their gratitude for the story and expressed concerns about their own teenagers and the demographic shift in heroin usage.

I can only commend Ruderman for her efforts to appeal to our self-interest and get Paolini in the paper. We all know how it works. The sheer volume of catastrophe in the world, combined with the increasingly jaded condition of the social psyche, makes it nearly impossible for the public to lend attention and resources to the case of every rape victim, addict, starving child or war casualty.

The New Jersey State Police Missing Persons Unit operates on this rationale. Ruderman informed me that for cases like Paolini's, the unit sends out "one or two people" who go on searches. Press releases and help from organizations like The Charley Project can add to the search efforts if the victim's family has the good fortune to contact and work with the right people. That's the situation with the search for Paolini. Meanwhile, two weeks back, a state police helicopter and 100 people went searching for Scotty.

Flipping through a plethora of stories about Scotty that were full of nothing but universally appealing fluff, I could not figure out why the media needed to link Paolini to a "bigger cause" in order to give her story that same universal appeal.

I put myself in the shoes of the hundreds of people concerned with Scotty, and suddenly it came to me: Just look at Scotty's mugshot and Paolini's. Scotty's is just more cuddly! People like cuddly.

I've actually tested this theory in the past. Often while walking my dog, I stop to chat with friends soliciting money for a charitable cause on Locust Walk. My canine companion has repeatedly gotten them more attention and yes, more donations.

Scotty is still missing, but I heard through the grapevine that, hey, the reward might go even higher because of public attention.

Paolini is still missing too, but Appleton continues her searches for Jessica in dark alleys alone.

Arushi Sharma is an College junior from Rockville, Md. Her e-mail address is sharma@dailypennsylvanian.com. A Case of the Mondays appears on Mondays.

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