Kidnapping. For those who grew up in the mid-20th century, it was the stuff of TV shows and suburban legends.

Then, in 1996, the abduction and murder of Amber Hagerman spawned the AMBER alerts we receive on our phones. Six years later came Elizabeth Smart, who went missing for nine months before being rescued from a couple who held her captive.

In 2008, the film “Taken” became a hit and scared a lot of people from letting their college kids take overseas trips.

And through the years, we altered our behavior. We stopped letting our kids play in the street. We drove them everywhere. We gave them phones and GPS locators so we could check up on their whereabouts, even at school.

We became overprotective, at times even paranoic, about our children’s safety.

That has changed.

Two weeks ago, an 84-year-old woman named Nancy Guthrie was reportedly taken from her Tucson, Arizona, home in the middle of the night. Soon, ransom notes began appearing. As the story grew, Guthrie – the mother of popular “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie – became daily news. And suddenly all of us knew someone who’d been kidnapped.

And the idea of our older loved ones being abducted by strangers became something new to worry about.

No paper trails

I recently had a high-profile person ask that I not mention his mother’s last name in an article, out of concern that someone might target her the way Nancy Guthrie was seemingly targeted. Law enforcement authorities fret that the length of the Guthrie case will spawn more copycats.

And now, thanks to the internet, there is a new wrinkle to be dealt with. The advent of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency means demands can be made that don’t involve delivering a suitcase full of money to a clandestine location. Digital currency transfers are harder to trace, and clever users can switch addresses quickly.

It also allows people who have no connection to the crime to jump on the pile and claim the victim will be freed if a certain amount of money is transferred. How do you know what’s real and what isn’t? And once the money’s gone, it’s awfully hard to get back.

As days passed in the Guthrie case, Americans shared conversations along these lines: “Can you imagine? … I feel so bad for the kids. … Do you think she’s still alive? … Did you see the video from her front door? ...”

That video, chilling in its starkness, revealed a person covered head to toe, with a ski mask, black gloves, a flashlight in his mouth and a backpack over his shoulders. He looked like he meant business, that this was all premeditated.

That made it even scarier.

Commonplace in Haiti

Kidnapping, like a house fire, is a horror we rarely think about until it happens; then we realize how vulnerable we were all along.

I think about kidnapping a lot. That’s because I travel monthly to Haiti, a place where the practice, sadly, is commonplace. In 2024, there were 1,500 reported kidnappings in Haiti, almost all in the capital city of Port Au Prince, and authorities believe the real number may be 10 times higher because people don’t report it due to fear of retaliation.

That would be 15,000 people snatched from their lives – in a year! The techniques the abductors use (they are commonly gang members) follow patterns: driving cars that box a victim’s car in from the front and back, or waiting outside a known place of business for the victim to emerge, or disguising themselves as police officers who stop motorists, then abduct them.

They then find the kidnapped person’s cellphone and begin calling numbers, demanding outlandish money from whoever answers.

A global tragedy

Imagine living with the fear of this happening every time you go out to the market, or the bank, or to visit family. It’s horrifying. So why don’t more people empathize with the Haitians’ plight?

For that matter, why didn’t more people empathize with the 250 kidnapped Israeli victims taken from their homes and gatherings by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023?

Those victims were held for months. Many were murdered; others were tortured and starved before their eventual release.

Yet many of us reacted differently to that news than we did to the Guthrie kidnapping. Perhaps because it’s more personal when it’s one victim and your own country. Perhaps it’s because Savannah Guthrie is so well-known.

Or perhaps it’s because we don’t want to think it can happen to us, because that means worrying about every time we leave a loved one alone, or we are alone or a stranger knocks on the door.

There is nothing more precious than freedom, and nothing as valuable that can be stolen so quickly. One moment, Nancy Guthrie was living her days; the next moment, someone else was in charge of them. That kidnapper didn’t just seize one life; he seized the lives of everyone who cared about Guthrie. They all became hostages.

We already worried about this happening to our kids. The Guthrie case makes us think about our parents: What would we do, how would we feel, to whom would we turn? It’s what makes kidnapping such a uniquely awful crime, and such a two-sided tragedy; the missing and the waiting. You wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

• Mitch Albom writes for the Detroit Free Press. His column is distributed by Tribune Content Agency.