It took four days of heavy lifting, construction, wiring, climbing ladders and drilling to complete the security system installation at the Eagles Nest Camp and Children’s Orphanage in Guatemala. But much more went into Operation Security Blanket then just four days of sweat and labor.

For nearly 30 years Claire and Larry Boggs have been operating the orphanage in Guatemala in which they try to find adoptive U.S. families for the children. But a burglary in 2002 at their orphanage in Sololá found both of them at gunpoint, followed by another burglary which left the Bogg’s picking up the pieces a second time. It didn’t take much persuading on anyone’s part to convince them that a security system was of dire necessity for the orphanage.

“I was shocked that people would choose an orphanage to feed their greed but seconds later I blamed myself for thinking that it wouldn’t happen to us,” explained Larry Boggs, executive director and owner of Eagle’s Nest Camp and Children’s Orphanage. “We had two armed guards in place since the first robbery and they had a trained dog at their disposal. At the time of the intrusion, the dog was still in his pen and the guards were surprised by the multiple intruders. What was going through my mind was ‘we can’t fight this.’”

It wasn’t until a trip to Guatemala that brought together the Bogg’s with the family of Mark Hillenburg, product architect, Digital Monitoring Products (DMP), Springfield, Mo., who became the director of Operation Security Blanket, that really got the project headed in the right direction.

“My daughter went on a high school missions trip to Guatemala and my wife was a chaperone on that trip,” explained Hillenburg. “So they had been there and seen the kids and the children’s home. Later that year the Bogg’s came to visit our church and we had them over for dinner. We just started talking about security and the needs of the children’s home. The more we talked, the more I thought we could make this come together to meet their needs.”

Wasting no time, Hillenburg set out to address the security needs of the Bogg’s orphanage in Guatemala. In the months leading up to the installation process, which took part around the end of March 2009, Hillenburg worked to spread the word on the project while raising the funds necessary to get all installers and volunteers of the project to the shelter.