CLEVELAND (WJW) – “You can’t just turn the light switch off. It never goes away,” said Newburgh Heights Police Chief John Majoy, explaining the challenge of working on a missing person’s case.

“When you look into the eyes of family members, they just want help. They just want that call that says their loved one has been found,” he said.

Chief Majoy works daily to provide that phone call as the lead investigator for Cleveland Missing. 

Cleveland Missing is a program started by Gina DeJesus, who survived Cleveland’s most infamous missing person’s case. 

“They want a success story like Gina had and we want to give them that success story,” said Chief Majoy.

Recently, Cleveland Missing has had their hands full where it all started for them.

Chief Majoy told FOX 8 that nearly 30 children were reported missing in the first two weeks of May. 

“It is an alarming number to see what has been reported in Cleveland the last 30 days and so part of this is that we want to get awareness out to the public,” said Chief Majoy.

The veteran police chief says right now, they do not know why this spike in cases has happened and are working each day to answer that question. 

The best way to do that, finding the children who are lost.

“It’s really hard to digest at this point because once the children are found, we can analyze the data and see where it is taking us,” he said.

For now, Chief Majoy says his team is working around the clock to solve these cases. Their goal: bring peace of mind back to these families and their community.

“Unfortunately, some of these things do not have the best endings. We don’t want there to be bad endings to these cases, we don’t want these children to become victimized,” Majoy said.