Day Care Probed After Girl, 2, Is Found on Street

Cypress College officials are investigating the complaint of a nursing student who said the school’s day-care center never noticed when her 2 1/2-year-old daughter disappeared on Monday and was discovered wandering near a busy intersection.

Found by a stranger at 8:20 a.m., Katy Dunn was turned over to Buena Park police and then taken to the Orangewood Home for abused or abandoned children.

Debbie Dunn, 40, of Cypress said it was not until 4:45 p.m. that she discovered that her daughter was missing when she came to pick her up at the center. Only then, she said, did officials learn that the child had been lost and called police.

Still Katy was unable to see her mother. It was not until Tuesday morning, officials said, that the child was released to her parents because social workers for the home were not available to confirm that Dunn was Katy’s real mother.

“My daughter probably felt so totally abandoned,” Dunn said Tuesday. “I never felt so helpless.”

Cypress College President Kirk Avery later defended the staff, said the entire matter is under investigation and declared that a fence will be installed today around the center.

“This has been kind of unusual. But I’m sure the staff followed policy right to the letter,” he said.

“I’m fully satisfied that the staff acted appropriately,” Avery said. Avery also said he has not confirmed that the child was ever brought to the center. He declined, however, to allow The Times to review any of the center’s records that would show whether Dunn followed procedures and signed her daughter into the center on Monday morning.

Dunn said she arrived at the center, where she has brought Katy for more than a year, at 8 a.m. Monday. The two walked to the center’s front room, where there were several day-care workers and teachers, and Dunn wrote her daughter’s name and the time on the log, she said.

She then watched Katy put her lunch in her assigned cubbyhole and kissed her goodby. Dunn said she left the center thinking her daughter was being watched.

Dunn said she came back for Katy at 4:45 p.m. after she had picked up her 13-year-old daughter at junior high. A day-care center employee told Dunn that Katy had never arrived in the morning.

“I thought ‘Oh my God, Oh my God!’ I thought I was going to pass out. I kept asking, ‘Where is she? Where is she!’ ” Dunn said.

She found her daughter’s peanut butter and jelly sandwich still in her cubbyhole. But her daughter was missing.

Katy apparently had wandered out of the center shortly after her mother left her there. She was found at about 8:20 a.m by a Cypress College student who saw her walking along in a blue sweat suit at the southeast corner of Holder Street and Lincoln Avenue, Buena Park Detective Vern Wadell said.

Holder Street is right behind the center’s parking lot in the back. The front yard of the center does not have a gate.

“She was really lucky she didn’t get run over,” Wadell said. “That’s a very heavy thoroughfare because of all the students who go to the college.”

The student took the girl to a nearby fire station, where someone called the police.

“She’s a sharp kid. All she kept saying was, ‘I want my mommy,’ ” Wadell said.

But Katy did not know the name of the center or her own last name so the police took her to several nearby day-care centers. When no one recognized her, police took her to Orangewood in Orange, Wadell said.

The center never reported the girl missing, Wadell said.

It was after 5 p.m. when a day-care center employee called the police and learned that Katy was at Orangewood, Dunn said. But Dunn was told that she could not have Katy until Tuesday morning because social workers for the home were not available to confirm that she was the girl’s real mother.

Robert B. Theemling, executive director of Orangewood, said: “If there is no one who can verify that kid belonged to the mother, then the home had to delay her release to the following day.”

Debbie and Bill Dunn saw Katy again Tuesday morning, more than 24 hours after she was left at the center.

“I mean I can’t imagine what she must have been going through,” Debbie Dunn said. “I really thought she was gone from us.”

The center cares for about 55 children a day and operates during day and evening sessions for the campus. It is owned and operated by the college and has a state license, Avery said. The care center serves mainly students and staff members of the two-year community college.