People of my generation remember slurping down our breakfast cereal while quizzically looking at those girls on the milk cartons and wondering what on earth could have happened to them. In our Wonder Bread-Tiger Beat-Happy Days world, we were unable to imagine much worse than having to rake leaves or face a pop quiz. Then we’d grab our backpacks and scurry out of the house, invincible and invulnerable, our innocence putting distance between ourselves and the milk carton that held far worse news than the word “whole”.

But the distance began to close. In the summer of 1977, Nancy Coates, a girl from my junior high basketball team in Fayetteville, North Carolina, took a shortcut through the woods with her friend to a convenience store, probably for Slurpees or a clandestine pack of cigarettes. A young soldier from nearby Fort Bragg, high on drugs, grabbed the two girls, lashed them to a tree, and slit their throats. Her friend survived and the last I saw of her, she was sitting in the bleachers of a high school football game, spitting into Kleenex because her throat injuries prevented her from swallowing. Nancy wasn’t so lucky. She died that day on the tree.

In my early years in advertising, working for Eisner Communications in Baltimore, my creative director Bill Mitchell and I worked many a weekend on mostly happy accounts like hospitals, banks, bowling and the lottery. Sometimes he would bring his two children in with him. Kristin was then seven, David was four. Towheaded and gap-toothed, they were adorable. In my pre-Mommy years, I’d walk them to the deli for lunch, marvel at their drawings and absorb their cuteness. For the next nine years at the agency, I watched them grow into gangly teenagers, hearing from Bill about Kristin’s clothing crises and boyfriend drama.

Then I got the call. On June 3, 2005, Kristin Mitchell, freshly graduated from St. Joseph’s College and about to launch her career in food marketing, had been killed by her boyfriend. He stabbed her over 50 times and left her to bleed to death in her bed while he checked himself into an emergency room.

By then I had four children, three of them girls. The distance closed dramatically.

Five years later, I took my daughters and their friends to watch the University of Virginia women’s lacrosse team play at College Park. After the game, the 11- and 12-year olds swarmed the field to beg autographs from these ubertalented, other-worldly athletes. In bright blue and orange uniforms, sporting shiny ponytails and toothpaste-commercial smiles, they were fast and strong and nimble, the finest role models a mom could imagine for her daughters. Especially enchanting was the girl with the #1 on her jersey. “Mom, did you see that her last name was Love! ” I couldn’t have scripted it any better.

When Yeardley Love died two months later at the hands of her ex-boyfriend, I watched the distance disappear entirely as the horror descended on our breakfast table, taking away our breath and every ounce of our innocence. Yeardley’s death didn’t bring with it the uncertainty — or even the hope — of her face on a milk carton or billboard or the back of a truck. Her story took over every conversation, coaches’ talks at practice, and the modern-day version of the milk carton: television and social media. In People Magazine, the Yeardley Love cover story had a particularly ironic sidebar: the story of a girl from Yeardley’s high school, a smiling blonde named Kristin Mitchell. I couldn’t have scripted that, either.

Today, our oldest daughter is in her second year at James Madison University, and our two younger daughters attend West Potomac High School, in Alexandria, Virginia. And today we are desperately following the search for Hannah Graham, a second-year student at the University of Virginia. She graduated from our high school two springs ago and disappeared on her way to a party in the wee hours on Saturday morning, just over a week ago. She is one of several young women to have mysteriously vanished along the no-longer-bucolic Route 29 corridor in Central Virginia over the last five years. Our teachers are distraught. Television reporters have interviewed our classmates at school. Candles are lit around the school rock painted “#BringHannahHome”. Many of our friends joined the approximately 1,200 volunteers who combed Charlottesville looking for her last weekend.

As we absorb the breaking news, it spills into our breakfast conversations, carpool chats, parents’ coffees, texts and phone calls. There are no more mentions of “what if” or “can you imagine.” Hannah Graham and Yeardley Love and Kristin Mitchell and Nancy Coates and thousands of girls and women who are victims of violence are our daughters. We have walked halls and playing fields with these young women. We have sat in the same classrooms and churches. The possibility of losing our daughters to intimates and strangers, of lives being upturned in an instant, is staring us in the face and smiling as she runs out of the door.

In 2011, 1707 females were murdered by males in single victim/single offender incidents. 94% were murdered by a male they knew.

The Kristin Mitchell Foundation supports educational efforts that raise awareness among young adults about the dangers of unhealthy dating relationships. Kristinskrusade.org

The One Love Foundation, in honor of Yeardley Reynolds Love, motivates young people, through education and technology, to take a stand against domestic violence. Joinonelove.org

HelpSaveTheNextGirl.com and #SaveTheNextGirl to follow news and tips that could save our girls.

For information about violence against women in the United States, go to justice.gov/ovw

Kim Gallagher is an advertising creative director and graduate of the University of Virginia, residing in Alexandria, Virginia.