It's a terrifying thought: A child who is there when you kiss them good night, but gone by morning.

Today marks the grim, five-year anniversary of that scenario for the family of Danielle van Dam, who was snatched from her Sabre Springs home.

The days that followed brought a massive search for the 7-year-old, ending with the discovery of her body in East County a few weeks later. And the months that followed brought a summertime murder trial that gripped the region.

In the time since, the man convicted of killing the girl has been put on death row, and Danielle's family has started up a foundation in her name to promote child-safety measures.

Although David Westerfield, the man sitting on death row for the murder of Danielle, was not charged with a sex crime -- her body was too decomposed to yield evidence of sexual abuse -- allegations swirled that the case involved a sexual crime, and child pornography was found on his computer.

Danielle's kidnap and slaying case triggered a push to pass legislation dubbed Project KidSafe, a slew of bills focusing on preventing sex crimes, as well as the tracking and sentencing of sex offenders. Some made it into law, others died in legislative committees or failed to qualify as ballot initiates, still other pieces of the bills recently passed as parts of other legislation.

Among the ideas that landed into law is one that gives rise statewide to task forces designed to combat sex crimes and monitor sex offenders.

"We've got a tighter safety net than we had before," said state Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth, a Republican who represents Temecula and parts of East and North County. Hollingsworth is one of the creators of Project KidSafe.

The February 2002 kidnapping and murder of the second-grader thrust the van Dam family into the national spotlight alongside other names famed in a string of disappearances that garnered media attention that year. The middle-of-the-night kidnapping of Utah teenager Elizabeth Smart and the kidnapping and murder of 5-year-old Samantha Runnion from her Orange County home also made headlines in 2002.

"I think Jessica's Law and Amber Alert are definitely in place today because of Danielle and Samantha," Hollingsworth said.

Patterned after a Florida law, Jessica's Law requires paroled child molesters to wear satellite-tracking devices for the rest of their lives. Using the media, freeway signs and other means, Amber Alerts immediately alert the public to a child's abduction.

Danielle's mother, Brenda van Dam, declined to be interviewed for this story. She said the family has chosen instead to remember Danielle's life on her birthday, Sept. 22.

"I want to be positive," Brenda van Dam said. "We are doing good.

"I chose not to acknowledge that day," she said of the day of her daughter's disappearance.

Legislation leads to task force

The murders of Danielle and Samantha made Hollingsworth feel "a responsibility that I had to do something," he said. Hollingsworth, along with Assemblyman Jay LaSuer, R-La Mesa, created Project KidSafe.

One new Project KidSafe law grew directly out of the Westerfield case. Under the new law, the courts treat child pornography like drugs or contraband, limiting the distribution or reproduction of it. Now, defense attorneys cannot receive copies of the child pornography evidence, but must inspect in an evidence room under the eye of law enforcement. Hollngsworth said the point of the bill is to prevent further victimization of the children in the photos.

Another new law created sexual assault task forces to prevent sex crimes and monitor sex offenders. Thus far, a handful of counties have created such task forces, including large teams in San Diego and Riverside counties.

The Legislature passed most of that bill, and last year Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger included $6 million in his budget for the task forces. For the coming fiscal year, the governor has again asked that the tasks forces get $6 million.

Hollingsworth said he has accompanied officers from the San Diego Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement Task Force -- a team of investigators from city, county and state law enforcement agencies -- on ride-alongs and was "impressed."

"It accomplishes all that I imagined it would with the legislation," Hollingsworth said. "That's the kind of thing that keeps these sex offenders on the straight and narrow."

Save for task force and child pornography bills, few of the child-protection bills passed through the Legislature at first, so supporters turned to voters in 2003 and 2004, creating ballot initiatives that supporters said would tighten monitoring of sex offenders and stiffen their punishments. Those initiatives fell short.

Still, it was not the end of the effort. Many other pieces of the Project KidSafe legislation found their way into the state's Jessica's Law bill, which was co-authored by Hollingsworth and passed in Sacramento last fall.

Danielle's disappearance

Blonde-haired, blue-eyed Danielle met the balding, then-49-year-old David Westerfield for the first time just days before she disappeared. The girl, accompanied by her mother, went door-to-door selling Girl Scout cookies. Westerfield lived two doors down.

Her parents put her to bed late Feb. 1, 2002. The next morning, they found her canopied bed empty.

Suspicion fell on Westerfield, a twice-divorced, self-employed design engineer.

By Feb. 26, 2002, county prosecutors charged him with murder, even though there was no sign of Danielle.

The next day, nearly four weeks after she disappeared, searchers found the little girl's nude and badly decomposed body under an oak tree in Dehesa, a rural area east of El Cajon.

The case against Westerfield moved fast. By June 2002, jurors were seated and his murder trial began.

During eight weeks of sometimes gruesome, sometimes tedious scientific testimony, prosecutors argued that Westerfield molested, then forcefully smothered the girl.

After deliberating for 10 days, the jury found Westerfield guilty of kidnapping and murder. The same panel recommended the death penalty.

Killer awaiting attorney for appeal

Today, Westerfield sits in San Quentin State Prison, home of California's death row. Under state law, his sentence was automatically appealed to the California Supreme Court.

But more than four years after his sentence was handed down, Westerfield still has not been appointed an attorney to represent him on that appeal. No further court dates for his appeal have been set.

Robert Reichman works for the Califfornia Supreme Court, and is in charge of appointing attorneys to represent death row inmates for their state-mandated automatic appeal.

With more death penalty cases on appeal than qualified attorneys who are willing to work on them, the average wait for death row inmates to get a court-appointed appellate attorney is 4 1/2 years, Reichman said.

His office is just now appointing attorneys for people sent to death row in mid- to late 2002, but the appointment of an appellate attorney for Westerfield "will definitely occur in 2007," Reichman said.

'Remember me always'

As Westerfield's case works its way through the courts, and as lawmakers push for tougher punishments on certain crimes, memorials for Danielle serve as stark reminders of what happened in 2002.

Officials renamed the Interstate 8 overpass of Second Street in El Cajon the "Danielle van Dam Memorial Overpass," and her family attended the dedication ceremony on July 9, 2004.

And visitors to Petco Park may notice the seven memorial bricks in the ballpark's Frozen Rope section inscribed for the little girl, including one reading "We miss you Danielle" and another inscribed "Forever seven."

Another reads "Remember me always."

On the Web:

www.daniellelegacy.org

www.sdsafe.org

- Contact staff writer Teri Figueroa at (760) 631-6624 or tfigueroa@nctimes.com.