The U.S. Department of Justice announced Tuesday that the Missing Child Center Hawaii has received its Child Protection Award.

The center, which is a specialized criminal justice program affiliated with the state Department of the Attorney General, handles a range of cases involving missing children, including family and nonfamily abductions, endangered runaways and otherwise missing children who may be lost or injured. The center assists law enforcement in locating and recovering missing children, raises community awareness about missing children, circulates missing-child posters statewide, maintains the missing-child notification system for the general public and helps to execute federal and state laws related to missing children.

The DOJ honored center coordinator Amanda Leonard and assistant coordinator Kaleilani Grant in commemoration of National Missing Children’s Day, and they were selected by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland from about two dozen nominations from around the country.

Before Leonard and Grant joined the center in 2018, it had assisted law enforcement in nine recoveries of missing children. Between November 2019 and November 2020, the center assisted in over 180 recoveries — most of them involving endangered runaways.

At the center, Leonard works as the clearinghouse manager and the state’s Maile Amber Alert coordinator, and Grant provides insight into matters of human trafficking. While the center is composed solely of Leonard and Grant, it partners with law enforcement agencies, victim service providers and other organizations to physically locate and return children to their legal guardians.

“The Missing Child Center Hawaii earned this remarkable commendation through the dedicated efforts of Amanda and Kalei,” state Attorney General Clare Connors said Tuesday in a news release. “They are incredibly deserving of the DOJ Child Protection Award and I am both proud of and inspired by their commitment to keeping Hawaii’s children safe.”

In October, Leonard and Grant were also “instrumental” in “Operation Shine the Light,” a partnership between the center and the Hawaii Internet Crimes Against Children task force, law enforcement and four nonprofit organizations. The two-day effort located five runaway foster children age 16-17 on Oahu and returned them to Child Welfare Services. Three of the children were victims of trafficking, one was suffering from an overdose and one was a ward of the state who had been missing from Guam for 10 months.

“There is no greater priority than safely recovering missing children and reuniting them with their families and caregivers,” Leonard said. “It is our responsibility to do everything we can at the local, state and federal levels to protect this vulnerable population of children from abuse and victimization.”