Marc Klaas to shut down KlaasKids next year, ending decades of advocacy begun after daughter’s murder

Marc Klaas, whose 12-year-old daughter’s abduction and murder launched him into an unexpected career as a victim’s advocate and activist three decades ago, has decided to shut down the nearly 30-year-old organization he and his wife started with the aim of protecting other children.

The KlaasKids Foundation will still operate through the coming year, before phasing out at the end of 2024, Klaas said.

But at age 74, after nearly 30 years of travel, speaking engagements and aiding searches for missing kids, Klaas said he’s ready to take time for himself.

“We’ve been doing it for 30 years,” Klaas said Monday, a day after the 30th anniversary of his daughter’s Oct. 1, 1993 kidnapping. “I’m 74, and I don’t want to be doing this for the rest of my life.“

(Photos: A look back at the Polly Klaas case)

Klaas and his then-fianceé, Violet Cheer Klaas, launched the nonprofit foundation in 1994, soon after Polly Klaas was taken at knife-point from her mother’s Petaluma home by Richard Allen Davis, a longtime criminal named who had only recently been paroled.

During a commemorative event Sunday at the Acqua Hotel overlooking the bay in Mill Valley, Klaas reflected on the decision he and his wife made in starting the foundation so soon after Polly’s disappearance and death.

He said they acted with urgency, figuring they had about 90 days left on the public’s radar before some other high-profile tragedy or news event took the spotlight. (He noted that the shocking murder of O.J. Simpson’s wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, came soon after in June 1994.)

Violet Klaas, he recalled, told him to “do what you need to do” — that she would keep working in real estate, and they could live frugally, so he could pursue the foundation’s work. Marc Klaas had been operating a car rental agency at San Francisco’s tony Fairmont Hotel.

Davis’ long rap sheet, increasingly violent history and early release from prison set off a flurry of new legislation designed to prevent repeat offenders from getting back on the street so readily, notably California’s controversial “Three Strikes” law, which mandated life sentences for those convicted of a violent felony if their history included two serious violent crimes. Similar provisions were later passed around the country and were included in federal legislation.

Grieving the loss of the child he shared with his ex-wife, Eve Nichol, Marc Klaas, in many ways, was the face of the “three strikes” campaign.

He continued that work through the foundation, created as a way to “give meaning to Polly’s death,” along with pushing for practices and technologies that help arm parents and kids to keep them safe, developing guidelines for immediate action when a child goes missing and supporting families in person in the event of a disappearance.

Through its long-running Print-a-Thon services, the organization has fingerprinted and photographed more than 1 million children around the country, assisted more than 1,500 families in searching for missing children trained more than 1,600 search and rescue volunteers.

The foundation recently published a downloadable, 43-page search and rescue manual.

“We turned down movie deals and book deals and things like that because we wanted her death to make a real difference,” Klaas said.

He cited significant declines in violent crime and missing child cases in the decade or two that followed, and said he thinks the foundation helped accomplish that.

But in more recent years, in many ways, the foundation has been winding down as a result of economics, political shifts and personnel changes in the organization — notably the abrupt departure in August of last year of KlaasKids President Brad Dennis, who led the search and rescue team.

Rising costs for airfare, food and accommodations have made it difficult to justify cross-country trips for outreach and fingerprinting, as well, against the backdrop of constant fundraising.

During Sunday’s anniversary event, he also bemoaned the political pendulum, that he said was on the side of public safety when he started and now favors criminal just reform and ready releases, putting criminals back on the street.

Additionally, the overall effort of aiding suffering families “is incredibly emotionally taxing,” Klaas said. “It’s taking on other people’s burdens and hoping against hope that you can pull a miracle out of a field somewhere.”

Violet Klaas, in the meantime, has often stayed home alone, continuing her professional career while providing endless volunteer support to the foundation, he said.

But the work has nonetheless served its purpose, Marc Klaas said, allowing them to make a difference in honor of Polly.

“Oh, my goodness,” he said. “I think it helped us both tremendously.”

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan (she/her) at 707-521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MaryCallahanB.