Poster Reunites Mother With 2 Children

The mother of an 8-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter who were abducted nearly five years ago recounted Friday how they were finally located after the children recognized themselves in a missing kids poster at a Dallas restaurant.

Sherry Filimonuk, 28, whose children were allegedly taken by her divorced husband on Christmas, 1980, told a press conference of her emotionally painful search to find them and at her amazement “when I discovered that my children had actually seen their own pictures.”

The mother and children were quietly reunited a week ago after the father, Michael Filimonuk, 35, a carpenter, contacted his ex-wife and made arrangements for their return.

He faces four felony counts of child abduction in Sacramento, where he surrendered to law enforcement authorities Friday afternoon.

Deputy Dist. Atty. James E. Graves said Filimonuk was living with a previous wife, Paula Alvarado, 34, and their son Aaron, 6, in the Dallas area, along with Greg and Michele Filimonuk, who had been renamed Arthur and Shelly Jameson. Graves said that Alvarado also will be charged with felony child abduction and that arrangements were being made for her surrender.

Saw Their Pictures

Graves and Sherry Filimonuk said the father, Alvarado and the children were leaving a Denny’s restaurant in Dallas last month when Aaron turned to Greg and Michele, pointed at a missing children poster and said, “Look Arthur, there is you and Shelly.”

Later the same day, Mrs. Filimonuk said, Greg spotted a poster of himself on a big truck. She said the children began asking questions and the father decided to return them. “They were taken out of school in Texas Oct. 1,” Graves said.

Assemblyman Gray Davis (D-Los Angeles), who heads the nonprofit California Foundation for the Protection of Children and who is active in getting photos of missing youngsters imprinted on such things as grocery bags and milk cartons, called the press conference to cite the Filimonuk case as a success story for the nationwide effort to locate kids who vanish.

“In essence, these children found themselves,” Davis said. He said that “those pictures worked” and the father “basically felt that he had run out of room.”