Jared Soares | The Roanoke Times

Alicia Kozakiewicz, joined by state Sen. Steve Newman, R-Lynchburg, looks at a plaque bearing the law that was named after her. She spoke during a news conference at the Southern Virginia Child Exploitation Resource Center, a new hub for officers investigating Internet predators.

Jared Soares | The Roanoke Times

Bedford County Sheriff Mike Brown hugs Alicia Kozakiewicz, 22, during a news conference at the Southern Virginia Child Exploitation Resource Center, a new hub for investigators trying to prevent the sexual exploitation of children on the internet.

FOREST -- It began as a single investigator working 12 hours a week in a "broom closet" of the Bedford County Sheriff's Office.

It has mushroomed into nearly a statewide operation involving 77 law enforcement agencies with dozens of investigators, all cooperating to battle the sexual exploitation of children on the Internet.

More evidence of the growth of Bedford County Sheriff Mike Brown's anti-child pornography effort -- dubbed Operation Blue Ridge Thunder in its early days -- came Thursday when law enforcement officials from across the state gathered in a Forest business plaza to dedicate the new, 5,500-square-foot Southern Virginia Child Exploitation Resource Center.

The investigators who will now use the center as their headquarters have helped prosecute several hundred Internet child porn or exploitation cases in Bedford County since the unit was formed in 1998, Brown said. And as importantly, he added, each year they refer about 500 other cases to law enforcement agencies elsewhere in the nation.

Bedford County is looking to use the resource center to share its expertise in investigating child-porn trafficking, and during the dedication of the center Thursday, county authorities disclosed that they have already begun to do so.

Bedford County sheriff's Sgt. Terry Wright said a string of arrests and indictments across the state involving child pornography over the past few months is the result of a coordinated effort dubbed Operation Guardian. As part of the operation, Bedford's child-porn specialists earlier this year trained about three dozen investigators from around the state and sent them out looking for Internet predators and those who share child pornography online. The results: 64 criminal cases, the arrest or indictment of 22 people, and the seizure of 92 computers and more than 4,650 media devices such as hard drives, CDs and thumb drives.

"I look forward to Round 2 in the near future," said Wright, suggesting more major operations are in the works.

Now known as the Southern Virginia Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (Northern Virginia has its own task force), the organization once known as Operation Blue Ridge Thunder had humble beginnings.

In 1997, Brown said, investigator Sergio Kopelev was the county's only "cybercop." According to Brown, Kopelev spent 12 hours a week "basically operating from a broom closet," posing online as a child or a pedophile, spending time in chat rooms with child pornographers and sexual predators and amassing evidence.

The following year the sheriff's office created Blue Ridge Thunder, and it quickly expanded to three investigators. Today, the task force includes a supervisor, five investigators, an analyst and a forensic examiner, all in Bedford County.

Now, Brown is the chief administrator of the task force that stretches across southern Virginia and includes 77 law enforcement agencies. The new resource center in Bedford County constitutes the hub of the anti-child porn effort, where authorities will conduct investigations and training sessions.

The General Assembly agreed to fund the task forces in 2008 by imposing an extra $10 fine on people for each felony and misdemeanor conviction. The fines are expected to raise $1.5 million a year, with the Northern Virginia task force getting one-third of the money and Brown's task force getting one-third. The rest is being made available to law enforcement agencies that want to start their own Internet task force.

Part of that state funding will pay the rent for the space now occupied by the Southern Virginia resource center.

Underscoring the importance of tracking predators online, 22-year-old Alicia Kozakiewicz spoke at Thursday's dedication. In 2002, when she was 13, Kozakiewicz was abducted from her Pennsylvania home, held captive for four days and repeatedly raped. She was rescued when a team of investigators trained in Internet crime found her captor boasting online.

Looking around the room full of investigators, Kozakiewicz said, "Because all of you were there, I am here."