Woman Responds to Ad for Maid--Then Infant Is Kidnaped

The infant son of a Van Nuys couple was kidnaped Friday by a woman who had responded to the couple’s newspaper advertisement seeking a live-in maid, the Los Angeles Police Department reported.

Police were looking for 3-month-old Rudy Linares Ortega, along with a woman who telephoned his parents Thursday in response to an advertisement that was published a day earlier in La Opinion, a Spanish-language newspaper, detectives said.

After talking to the couple on the telephone, the woman arranged to meet Javier Ortega, 21, and Heydee Linares Medina, 27, Friday morning at the Van Nuys apartment where the couple lived with the infant and a 2-year-old son, Francisco Javier Ortega. They share the apartment with two family friends, Lt. Dennis Dunn said.

The job applicant gave her name as Rosa Lopez and told the couple that she lived near MacArthur Park, Dunn said. She said she needed the money for two young daughters she had left behind in El Salvador.

A Tearful Appeal

“All I wish is that she can return my baby,” Javier Ortega told reporters Friday night, with Linares weeping at his side and their 2-year-old son in his arms. “I really appreciate it, and if she doesn’t want anyone to know, we won’t let anyone know that she took my baby.”

Detectives would not say whether they would honor such a promise.

The couple was slightly suspicious of the woman because they were not convinced her Spanish accent was Salvadoran, Dunn said. Linares is from El Salvador, detectives said.

But “she did look safe,” Ortega said. The couple asked her for credentials when they met Friday morning, but she changed the subject and was hired after the couple decided, “Hey, she needs the job,” Ortega said.

The couple left the apartment for work Friday morning, leaving the children with the woman and the two family friends, Ortega said.

Baby, Clothing Gone

About noon, the friends left to buy food, Ortega said. They asked the woman if she wanted anything, and she asked for some cheese. They returned about 20 minutes later to find the baby missing and the 2-year-old asleep on the couch, Ortega said.

Also missing were several diapers, some formula and three changes of the baby’s clothes, he said.

The missing clothing “indicates she plans on keeping the kid,” Dunn said. “This isn’t one of those shopping-spree deals where they play with the child for a day or two.”

“We suspect that she planned this from way before,” Detective George Salazar said. “She asked certain questions . . . that normally a baby-sitter wouldn’t ask.” The questions included what vaccinations the infant had received and if he had been prescribed any medication, Salazar said.

The couple was looking for a baby-sitter because Ortega works at a Van Nuys furniture store and his wife wanted to return to her job as a housekeeper at a hotel near Universal Studios, said Ramon Ortega, who lives in an apartment downstairs from his brother Javier.

Police did not know if the woman suspected of abducting the child drove to the Ortega apartment, on Vanowen Street east of Sepulveda Boulevard, Dunn said. Detectives checked with cab companies and combed the area around the apartment building for witnesses who might have seen the woman leaving with the child, but none was found, he said.

The woman was described as a dark-haired Latina, aged 40 to 45, wearing blue pants and a white sweater, standing 5 feet, 7 inches and weighing about 180 pounds, Dunn said.

Dunn said a composite sketch of the woman is “all we’ve got . . . we’re just hoping someone will call.”