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COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. -- It's been a little more than a month since 9-year-old Calysta Cordova of Pueblo went missing.

Cordova gained national attention when she took advantage of her abductor's car trouble, running into a Circle K and calling 911.

Cordova's abduction had a happy ending, but not every child that goes missing is found.

One of the biggest challenges local law enforcement face with a missing person's case is the large number.

So, local authorities ask for help from the media to keep the face circling around the community.

But how closely are you looking at those missing posters?

I put together my own experiment with a mock missing poster and placed our missing child right in front of it.

I covered the front doors of a local big box retailer with our mock posters. They had bold letters that read "missing," a picture of our missing child, T.J. Helton, and a detailed description of his last known whereabouts.

One by one people walked by the posters, some taking a moment to analyze them, others just breezed by.

Forty minutes went by before one person, Chris Adams, realized our missing child was next to him.

"I noticed the kid standing there, and then I noticed the photo. They kind of matched, I said something to my wife and when we walked back out I knew it was him. I grabbed the photo and talked to the clerks inside," Adams, a Colorado Springs resident, said.

Another 20 minutes went by with Helton still posted outside the storefront, but no one took note.

At the start of our second hour I decided to point the sign out to shoppers.

Robert MacConnell of Colorado Springs said, "I noticed the sign but didn't look at it."

Peggy Apodaca of Colorado Springs didn't see the poster either and said, "It's amazing, especially with them right there. Just look how many people have walked in since we've been standing here."

The lack of response to our mock missing posters was no surprise for the Colorado Springs Police Department.

It's part of the reason why they now use social media sites when looking for a missing person.

On average 50-100 children and 25-50 adults go missing every month in Colorado Springs.

While some case have happy endings, a new Colorado Springs Police unit is making sure adult missing person cases don't go cold.

The Homicide/Missing Person's Unit works suspicious cases that had potential to have criminal activity.

Detective Ron Lopez created the unit back in 2009 in response to a lack of resources.

Back then, officers would work the cases, but when a homicide came up they had to put them on the back burner.

But the new unit, made up of Det. Lopez, an assistant and four volunteers, dedicates their full time to suspicious missing person cases.

There were 250 cases when the unit first started three years ago. That has now been reduced 23.

NAMUS, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, has helped close several of the unit's missing person cases.

The database use fingerprints, family DNA and dental records to give law enforcement possible matches.

"When I get off that phone I got to give [families] some kind of hope. I got to let them know that we're doing something," Det. Lopez with the Colorado Springs Police Department said.

For the families dealing with uncertainty some can only hope their missing child or person will come up safe and sound.