INS Heeds Family Plea, Lets Nanny Hero Return : Immigration: Parents win battle for illegal alien who helped when child she cared for was kidnaped. The government granted the woman a special dispensation.

Five years ago, Hirlanda Ramirez trembled as she slipped across the U.S. border crossing at El Paso, undetected by busy immigration officers. On Sunday, she returned to Los Angeles--legally--and was welcomed by the U.S. government as a heroine.

Ramirez, 33, who is from Guatemala and works as a nanny to a Pacific Palisades 4-year-old, played a key role in helping the family and authorities when the girl was kidnaped briefly in 1987. Ramirez served as the main witness in the case even though she risked deportation.

Her grace under pressure, as well as her strong bond with the precocious strawberry-blonde child, so impressed authorities that the federal government granted Ramirez a rare dispensation, allowing her to return to the United States and become a legal resident.

The same moxie that initially brought Ramirez to the United States catapulted her into a role during the family’s ordeal. She provided the family with moral support and cooperated with police and prosecutors in the case.

But when she left for Guatemala three months ago, Ramirez and the family were uncertain whether they would ever see each other again.

The family, which asked not to be identified, felt so strongly that Ramirez “deserved a break” after her “exceptional” conduct, that they began lobbying the federal government on her behalf, persevering for the better part of a year.

On Monday, Ramirez arrived at the family’s sprawling, ranch-style home with a special “humanitarian parole” permit in her purse.

As Ramirez approached the home, the little girl darted across the driveway and flew into her arms. “I missed you,” she told Ramirez. “I love you.”

For the Guatemalan nanny it was a bittersweet homecoming. Her own children--two boys ages 8 and 5, were left behind.

Those who know Ramirez, both in the United States and Guatemala, describe her as a woman of rare character and strength. Her courage has seldom failed her.

Abandoned by her husband in Guatemala when she was pregnant with their second child, Ramirez was unable to support herself and her children with her factory job.

She debated coming to the United States and leaving her children. “I cried and cried . . .,” she recalled. “Then one day I said, ‘Either I do something or I die of hunger with my children.’ ”

She said she spent her first year in Los Angeles crying over her children’s absence, but has never regretted her decision. The money she sends home from her earnings here enables her children to eat well. She regularly sends them new clothing and pays to send her eldest son to a private school. “Now they have a future,” she said.

Ramirez and the family she works for say they consider themselves fortunate for having met. The family lauds Ramirez as an exceptional woman of great warmth and strength. Ramirez said they make her feel like part of the family.

“The love I can’t give my own children, I give to her,” said Ramirez, rocking her young ward on her lap. And the feeling is mutual.

During Ramirez’s three-month absence, the little girl often asked about her and kept a snapshot of the two of them taped to her bedroom wall, amid her dolls and stuffed animals.

She does not remember the kidnaping that occurred a block from her home three years ago, and her parents want to keep it that way. She was only 14 months old at the time.

Ramirez was pushing the infant in a stroller in the middle of the afternoon when a masked man suddenly pulled up in a car. Flashing a gun, he grabbed the child and sped off, leaving a ransom note behind.

After spending the “worst night of our lives,” the anguished parents were informed the next morning that their child had been found wandering unharmed in a park. She had not been hurt or molested, said the girl’s father, a radiologist.

Her abductor had apparently kept her tied overnight to a tree in the Santa Monica Mountains, but had released her while he headed to pick up the ransom money. Police were waiting for him at the pickup spot.

From the moment the kidnaping occurred, Ramirez never hesitated. She ran to a neighbor’s home to call police and then cooperated fully during several hours of questioning.

“A lesser person would have run away,” said the girl’s father. “She proved herself under fire.”

Ramirez was just as cooperative with the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office and, as the only realiable eyewitness in the case, her testimony was critical during the trial. The result was a life sentence for Mark Faulkner, then a 21-year-old San Fernando resident.

“I didn’t care if I got deported. What mattered to me was that the girl be recovered as quickly as possible,” Ramirez said. “And if I hadn’t testified, he might have done it again and again.”

The girl’s father said that “it was a pretty open and shut case.” Winding his way through the federal bureaucracy in search of clemency for Ramirez was a greater challenge.

With guidance from an immigration lawyer, the girl’s father was able to gain needed labor certification, through the U.S. Department of Labor, after demonstrating that the family was unable to find a U.S. citizen or legal resident willing and qualified to take her job. The family then petitioned for an immigrant visa on Ramirez’s behalf. Although it was approved, it normally takes about three years for it to be granted.

When Ramirez got word that one of her own children had fallen ill last fall, she flew back to Guatemala. Once outside the country, she had no legal basis for returning.

It was then that the girl’s father began a letter-writing and telephone campaign with immigration officials in Washington, asking that Ramirez be granted special “parole” status, allowing her to return to the country immediately.

Not only was Ramirez important to his child’s well-being, the father argued, “she deserved a break.”

“She did something that a lot of American citizens would not have done,” he said.

He felt so confident that justice was on his side that he wanted to test the system, he said. “I felt that if I’d ever been right in anything, I was right in this case. And I believed the system could respond.”

He had heard less than glowing reports about the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, often labeled one of the least efficient federal government agencies. To his surprise, however, he said he found that the INS had a heart. “They’re tough, but there is compassion there,” he said.

His perseverance and the compelling nature of the case won out.

National INS Commissioner Gene McNary, who approved the parole petition based on humanitarian grounds, called it “a close call.”

“We do not want to appear to condone the practice of hiring illegal aliens as maids or nannies,” he said, and added that the child’s well-being was what persuaded the INS to grant the parole. The INS receives about 4,000 such petitions a year and approves only about one-fifth of them, according to an INS spokesman.