Two Children Found Safe After Being Kidnaped in Stolen Car

Two children sleeping in their father’s car when it was stolen here Thanksgiving night were found unharmed Friday at a shopping center in San Ysidro.

A passer-by noticed the father’s car in the Plaza Mayor parking lot and notified San Diego police. Authorities rushed to the scene to find Sylvia Esquivel, 5, and her brother David, 4, playing around the car.

The youngsters were reunited at the National City Police Department with their tearful parents, Maria and David Esquivel, who had spent an agonizing day awaiting word in a motel room.

As a cruiser carrying the youngsters arrived at the station, a crush of reporters surrounded the parents, who ran toward the car and embraced the children.

“I’m happy. They’re here, and that’s all that counts,” Mrs. Esquivel said.

Their father agreed. “I feel so happy, like never in my life,” said Esquivel, 29. “I don’t care about anything. My life is my kids.”

Lt. Tom Deese of the National City Police Department said the thief who took the car from a gas station about 11 p.m. Thursday may initially have been unaware that the children were asleep on the back seat. The man, described only as a short Latino, apparently dropped the car off in the parking lot of a K mart store in the 4300 block of Camino de la Plaza early Friday morning, Deese said.

Neither child showed any signs of being molested, Deese said, noting that the pair may have never been aware that the driver was not their father.

The youngsters stayed in and around the car, playing together, until authorities arrived about 4:30 p.m. The children were reunited with their desperate parents about an hour later. “It seemed like I was never going to see them,” Mrs. Esquivel said later.

The children’s odyssey began when their father, a forklift operator from Porterville, Calif., stopped in National City to buy gas near the southbound Interstate 805 exit at Plaza Boulevard late Thursday night. The three were en route to Ensenada, Mexico, where they planned to visit relatives.

Police said that, with his two children sleeping in the back seat, Esquivel parked his car--with the motor running--about three feet from the door of the gas station along West Plaza Boulevard, and stepped inside to buy a soft drink. As he stood at the cash register, Esquivel saw a man driving away with the car and his children.

He ran out of the store and, in desperation, chased the car for about a block, police said. It was futile--the car was gone, the children kidnaped.

After the kidnaping, law enforcement agencies throughout the state were alerted and given a description of the vehicle, a 1978 Chevrolet Camaro.

Esquivel later notified the children’s mother, Maria Esquivel, at her home in Delano. The parents are separated.

“I felt like dying,” Mrs. Esquivel said after learning of the kidnaping.

She arrived in National City on Friday and waited with her husband in a motel room for news of their children. To pass the time, the couple drove and walked the streets around the gas station searching for clues.

Mrs. Esquivel said she placed a telephone call to National City police at least once every hour in hope of hearing news.

Later, Mrs. Esquivel learned that Donald Bisner of San Ysidro had seen her children about 10:30 Friday morning, in the shopping center parking lot. But it wasn’t until Bisner saw news reports later that he realized that it might be Sylvia and David Esquivel.

He then returned to the shopping center, checked the car’s license plates, and called San Diego police, said Mrs. Esquivel, who talked with Bisner on Friday night. She said police found her children playing around the car at the shopping center about 4:30 p.m.

The children live in Delano with Mrs. Esquivel, who allowed them to travel with their father to Ensenada. David Esquivel said he and the children still will go on to Ensenada.