( CNN ) -- Robert Levy , father of the Capitol Hill intern found slain nine years ago in Washington 's Rock Creek Park , revealed to The Washington Post recently something he had never shared before but that all parents understand . When he dropped off Chandra , 24 , at the Metro a week before she was reported missing , `` Something inside of me knew it was going to be the last time I ever saw her . I just wish I had done something . '' He did n't tell anyone , including his wife , about his misgiving . Not during the investigation of U.S. Rep. Gary Condit , who was having an affair with Chandra . Not when a day laborer from El Salvador was arrested for Chandra 's murder . Only now , nine years later , can Robert Levy admit the guilt he still feels . Surely , he knows that he 's being irrational . Chandra was living and working in the nation 's capital , not a war zone . What was he going to do ? Tell her to get back in the car ? Do not be embarrassed , Mr. Levy . We all have these feelings about our children . And we rarely act on them . According to Bureau of Justice statistics , violent crimes against Americans 12 and older are at their lowest level in more than three decades . As young people move through their 20s , their victimization rate , already low , declines further . We in the media fail to remind people enough of these things . We sometimes forget such statistics , however , because new and old forms of media feed us a 24-hour-a-day diet of menace and mayhem -- the constancy of which previous generations of parents did n't experience . As Alfred Blumstein , a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and criminal justice expert , says , `` We 're inundated with information about crimes . The more bizarre and horrendous , the more saliency they get . '' The steady drumbeat of crime pumps up our anxiety that something bad may happen to our child that we could have or should have prevented . Maybe it surfaces the first time we leave our infant with a baby sitter . Or when we give our elementary school-age daughter permission to start walking home from school by herself and she does n't call us at work the minute she gets there . It 's not just criminals we fear . We agree reluctantly to let our 17-year-old son , a newly licensed driver , drive his friends home from soccer practice . It 's 8 p.m. , he 's not home yet and we start to fret . Or we put our college student on an airplane and for a split second think , `` What if that thunderstorm they 're predicting takes the plane down ? '' When my grown son went scuba diving for the first time on the Great Barrier Reef , I woke up in the middle of the night worrying that his oxygen tank might fail . Had I talked enough with him about precautions he should take ? Did the tour guide know how to reach my husband and I right away should something happen ? I told myself , `` He 's 25 , for God 's sake . '' That helped , but not much . We question ourselves less frequently as our children get older , but not a lot less . Why ? Daniel Keating , a psychology professor at the University of Michigan , suspects there 's more to it than media coverage . Parents are more deeply involved in their older children 's private lives than previous generations were , he says . College is no longer the `` declaration of independence '' it used to be , for child or parent , but rather a continuation of credit card charges , daily phone calls and regular texts . We continue to prop up our children long after they actually need us to . It 's not surprising , then , that when something bad happens , we assume we could have done something to prevent it . The ability to stay connected round-the-clock may be the clincher . Remember when we were in college and our parents had to phone the front desk of our dorms in the hopes of reaching us ? They knew there was a good chance we would n't get the message until the next day , if at all . Logistics made it silly , if not useless , for them to worry immediately . With texting and Twitter , Keating says , `` We have the technical ability of constant surveillance . This keeps our children constantly in our minds . '' We need not cut connections , although fewer peeks on Facebook might not be a bad idea . And , says Keating , we need not -- indeed we should not -- repress our fears . Instead , he advises parents to identify the specific event they 're afraid of and counter with the evidence that it 's really unlikely . `` If possible , let it fly away as rapidly as it flew in , '' he says . The opinions in this commentary are solely those of Laura Sessions Stepp .
Laura Stepp : Robert Levy , Chandra 's dad , feared he would n't see her again . Comment: All parents share fears about losing a child they love , Stepp writes , but do n't act . She says media drumbeat of crime , parents ' deeper involvement exacerbate fears .