The recent child kidnappings in Utah, California and Pennsylvania are making parents nervous. Some communities are pushing for abduction alerts and others are just more on guard.

Recent kidnappings have garnered a lot of attention: 5-year-old Samantha Runnion was kidnapped, sexually assaulted and murdered in California; 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart is still missing from her Utah home; 20-year-old Rachel Cooke, 19 at the time of her abduction, vanished without a trace from her Georgetown neighborhood early this year; And the only kidnapping with a happy ending so far is Erica Pratt -- a 7-year-old who escaped her captors Tuesday night in Pennsylvania.

All this has parents on edge, even here in Austin. A letter was sent out from Beaver Brook Children's Center in Northwest Austin alerting parents about current events in other parts of the country.

Beaver Brook has not had any abductions or problems, but wanted to keep parents up-to-date. "It alarms me that it's happening but I think it's one of those things that it happens probably all the time and because we hear about it nationally. It just scares us a little more but it's something we need to be concerned about all the time," said Lisa White of Beaver Brook Children's Center.

Mothers Joan Doughty and Christene Cornwell are concerned about the current events involving children.

“The current environment I think is very frightening, I think it's very sad. I think our children are in grave danger on many levels," Doughty said.

"You've really just need to keep an eye on them all the time," Cornwell said.

Williamson County has implemented an alert system for abductions. Meanwhile, in light of the Samantha Runnion case, California officials are considering doing the same.