The 11-year-old had been reported missing on Saturday night, just hours after she had left her North Bondi home following what has been described as a family argument.

Just 12 hours later, hundreds of people joined a search scouring the Eastern Suburbs on Sunday looking for any trace of the girl, joined by officers from the Police Rescue Team and SES personnel.

At the same time, the young girl’s face was posted across the internet, television and newspapers right across the state and by Sunday evening there would have been few people in NSW unaware of the story.

Remarkably, Sunday also marked the anniversary of the disappearance of another young girl – Bathurst’s Jessica Small.

Jessica was last seen in the early hours of October 26, 1997 after accepting a ride home in a white Commodore.

She, too, was quickly reported missing, but the response to the news could not have been more different.

A coroner’s inquest into Jessica’s disappearance and presumed murder confirmed a lack of police response in the first hours after she went missing severely hampered the chances of her abductor being caught.

The inquest found that police allowed their prejudices to dictate their response to the evidence before them. That’s a disgraceful stain that cannot be erased from the case.

The police and community response to Michelle Levy’s disappearance is the response we would hope to see for every missing child in this state.

That was not the case 17 years ago. Let’s hope it is the case today.