Neighborhood watch groups in St. Joseph County are being asked to help after the county's neighborhood watch police files were lost.

Do not worry; there is no danger of these files falling into the wrong hands.

While they do contain names, addresses, email addresses and phone numbers of more than 200 county residents, the files are lost for good.

That is why county crime prevention officials are scrambling right now and issuing a plea to neighborhood watch captains countywide.

One week ago, Newscenter 16 talked to Lt. Regis Thimons about how residents go about setting up a neighborhood watch program.

Thimons, who is St. Joseph County's neighborhood watch coordinator, called us a few days after our story aired with some distressing news.

Lt. Thimons says, “It's six years of work that's no longer there….We had some computer errors, crashed our computer, and we thought we had the whole program backed up before this happened, but unfortunately it's not. It's not available to us.”

What's not available?

The contact information for every single neighborhood watch captain in the county.

“We're kind of sending out a plea for anyone who has been a contact person for any neighborhood watch program for all of St. Joseph County, that being 213 total, we'd like everyone to contact me…and get them back on the contact list.”

That contact list is a vital conduit to thousands of St. Joseph County residents, who rely on neighborhood watch captains to warn them about crime in their area or crime that may be just a subdivision away

“Contact them when their neighborhood, neighborhoods in their area, are being hit by crimes, I could contact them and say "Hey, keep an eye out," or send them an email.”

Thimons has been able to retrieve some contact information for his watch captains.

He has some email addresses on another computer and some phone numbers, and he has been able to reach out to about two dozen or so watch captains.

He has even enlisted some of them to track down contact information.

However, he says his job will not be completed until he has the contact information for all 213 people on that now dead file.

So, if you are a neighborhood watch contact person in St. Joseph County, you can e-mail Lt. Thimons at rthimons@co.st-joseph.in.us, or call him at 574-235-9569.