Kidnap-Robbery in Palmdale Foiled : Crime: Gunmen held a savings and loan assistant manager and her husband captive for 24 hours before trying to rob the S&L;.

Two gunmen held the assistant manager of a savings and loan and her husband captive in their Palmdale home for more than a day, then forced the woman to go to her office in a robbery attempt that was foiled by a silent alarm, authorities said Friday.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies, responding to the alarm, rescued Denise Adkins, 24, at Southern California Savings in Newhall early Friday and arrested Brian Keith Sims, 29, of Duarte, after a short chase, the FBI said.

Another man--identified as Tyrone McCraw, 29, of the Pomona area--escaped by commandeering a car at gunpoint and remained at large Friday night, an FBI spokesman said.

The robbers did not harm Adkins or her husband, Dennis, during the 36-hour ordeal in the house in the 5300 block of East Avenue R-11 in Palmdale, authorities said.

“It was a very traumatic experience, but they were not physically abused,” said Michael Iracondo, Denise Adkins’ father. Iracondo accompanied his daughter to a neighbor’s home to be reunited with her husband Friday morning.

Neighbors said they were terrified to learn that the couple had been held captive without anyone’s knowledge in the house on the quiet cul-de-sac in a new subdivision.

According to authorities, the incident began Wednesday evening when Denise Adkins returned home from work and was confronted by two masked men, one armed with a pistol. The men, who had broken into the house earlier, also armed themselves with a shotgun they found in the residence.

Adkins’ husband, a Los Angeles city firefighter, was working an overnight shift.

Early Thursday morning, the gunmen forced Denise Adkins to call her husband and ask him to come home on the pretext that she was suffering severe back pains, according to authorities and neighbors. The robbers bound Dennis Adkins when he arrived, then held the couple captive in the house for the next 24 hours.

“He said they treated them fairly decently,” said Billy Pricer, a Sheriff’s Department chaplain who comforted Dennis Adkins. “They gave him water and food, they let him smoke a cigarette and go to the bathroom.”

The robbers left Dennis Adkins bound in a bathroom early Friday morning and took his wife to the Southern California Savings branch office.

About 5:30 a.m., the robbers forced Denise Adkins to open the savings office and told her to remove money from the vault. But she could not open the vault because the time lock would not unlock until shortly before 9 a.m., said John Doyle, a spokesman for the savings office.

An alarm sounded at the Santa Clarita office of the Sheriff’s Department about 5:45 a.m. FBI spokesman Jim Neilson would not say whether Adkins triggered the silent alarm intentionally or whether it went off automatically.