Baby Marcos Goes Home With Grandfather at Last

Baby Marcos is going home. To Tijuana.

With a little last-minute help from a San Diego television reporter.

The 16-month-old child, who was discovered among a carload of smuggled illegal aliens and whose identity remained unknown for almost eight months, was turned over Thursday to the custody of his paternal grandfather, Rene Fernando Herrera, a Tijuana tile worker and taco-stand owner.

The move, authorities say, follows an extensive background investigation of the grandfather’s home by U. S. and Mexican officials.

The reunion of grandfather and grandson--accomplished after some delays when a television reporter found the grandfather in Tijuana and drove him across the U.S.-Mexico border--would appear to end months of speculation about the future of the child. Although U. S. immigration officials often find infants among the hundreds of undocumented immigrants arrested along the border each month, authorities said this was the first case in which a parent or legal guardian had not appeared for such a long period.

Grandfather Stepped Forward

After officials went public with the story last month, however, the grandfather stepped forward and the child was identified as Marcos Antonio Herrera, born in California in September, 1987. His father is a recovering heroin addict living in San Diego. Both natural parents agreed that the grandfather should have custody of the child, authorities said.

“We always feel a child is better off being among his family,” said Yolanda Thomas, a spokeswoman for the San Diego County Department of Social Services, which has been handling the case since he was identified last month.

After he was discovered in May, immigration authorities arranged to place the child with a foster family in San Diego. He had been living in the foster home since then.

The plan to present the child to his grandfather appeared to run into a last-minute hitch Thursday when the grandfather didn’t appear at a ceremony planned at the San Diego headquarters of the U. S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. The grandfather was apparently unaware of the planned news conference.

However, a television reporter, John Britton of KNSD-TV (Channel 39) in San Diego, found the grandfather at his Tijuana home Thursday and brought him to San Diego.

In Tijuana, officials said, the child will live with Herrera, 37; his wife, Olga, 32, who is a pharmacist’s assistant, and the couple’s two other children, Elsbeth, 12, and Jacqueline, 1. The two other youths are, like Marcos, U. S. citizens.

The grandfather has two other children, including Marcos’ father, from an earlier relationship, officials said. The family lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Tijuana’s Zona Norte neighborhood.