State to Check Center Where Girl, 2, Strayed : Day care: Cypress College and facility officials continue to blame child’s mother for not making certain that she was properly checked in.

State licensing officials said Wednesday that they will investigate the Cypress College day-care center from which a 2 1/2-year-old girl wandered away unnoticed into traffic earlier this week and was not missed until her mother came to pick her up late in the day.

“It’s real hard to see how a child could get out and not have anyone notice it,” said Ann Tanouye, child-care ombudsman for the division of the state Department of Social Services that regulates day care. “We shouldn’t have episodes like this.”

Meanwhile, college and day-care center officials--acknowledging for the first time that the incident had occurred--installed a gate at the front of the center and tightened sign-in and attendance check procedures. However, they stuck to their earlier assertions that the mother, Cypress College nursing student Debbie Dunn, bears the blame for not following proper drop-off procedures, even though she brought her daughter, Katy, into the center and signed the time of day next to the child’s name.

Dunn angrily denies any neglect and said she followed the same procedure that she and other parents always do in dropping their children off each morning.

Nevertheless, college President Kirk Avery said an in-house investigation has satisfied him that the staff of the 15-year-old center is blameless and that parents need to take more responsibility for informing the center’s teachers of their child’s arrival.

Questions were also raised Wednesday about why the little girl was held overnight at Orangewood Children’s Home, where police took her Monday morning after she was found by a passer-by.

Dunn found her daughter at Orangewood on Monday evening after discovering her missing at the center, but officials would not release the child, refusing to call a social worker to help verify the parents’ identity because it was shortly after the 5 p.m. closure deadline.

Ron Kennedy, the senior social worker for the county who had handled Katy’s case at Orangewood earlier that day, said he wishes that he had been called.

He wrote a memo to his supervisor Wednesday “to see if there is a more expeditious way of handling this the next time.”

“I felt that they (the parents) had a reason to be upset. . . . It could have been handled in another way,” Kennedy said.

Orangewood Executive Director Robert B. Theemling reiterated Wednesday that the staff member on duty Monday evening acted appropriately in holding off on Katy’s release. But he added that he could understand the parents’ concern and that there may be room for improvement in the system.

But college officials Wednesday were not so willing to accept responsibility. They elaborated on earlier statements that the parents should make sure a child is properly handed over to day-care center workers.

Elma Clamp, vice president of administrative services, said that Dunn brought Katy to the center about 8 a.m. through the front door, but never “delivered her to the teacher,” which he said is required by center regulations. He said an unnamed witness saw Katy standing in the open doorway as her mother departed and that the child apparently followed Dunn into the parking lot.

Clamp contended that the staff never knew the child had been there. A sign-in sheet for Monday has a time of 8 a.m. written in by Katy’s name, but the entry is accompanied by no signature.

The child was found about 20 minutes later on the other side of a busy intersection and taken by an adult education student to the Buena Park Fire Station, across the street from the center. From there, Katy was turned over to police and later taken to Orangewood because, when asked, center officials said that no children were missing, according to Buena Park Fire Department Capt. Jim Cooper.

Dunn vigorously protested college officials’ version of the story. “I took her in. I signed her in. I turned around and said hello to a blonde teacher sitting in front of the director’s office. I kissed Katy goodby.”

As she left, she said, she noticed her child in the doorway and took her back in. “I said (to center personnel), ‘Katy just walked out the door.’ Then I said, ‘Katy, I’m leaving now,’ and I walked out.”

State officials, meanwhile, puzzled by the troubling incident, said that their field workers would try to determine whether there are any systemic problems at the Cypress facility that need to be fixed.

“It’s an unusual case, so when we get a report like this, we’ll certainly send an investigator,” said Mary Kaarmaa, licensing program supervisor for the state’s day-care unit office in Santa Ana. “A child walking out of the center and being sent to Orangewood is a very, very serious situation. Everyone’s very fortunate that the little girl was OK.”

State day-care officials theorized that the incident was caused by a breakdown in communication between the parent and day-care personnel.

Kaarmaa and ombudsman Tanouye said that, under their reading of state day-care regulations, it is the parent’s responsibility not merely to sign in the child at the center but also to ensure that the child is turned over to a staff person.

“Parents really can’t afford to make any assumptions that their child is being cared for; they have to take the responsibility for seeing that happen,” Kaarmaa said.

At the center Wednesday, director Diane Montano said that she has received only calls of sympathy and support from parents.

Martha Watters of Garden Grove, who has been bringing her son to the center for two years, said the center is well-supervised. “I can’t imagine any neglect of any sort. Obviously, there were some weird circumstances.”

But the incident frightened her, she said. “It could’ve been my child. At 2 years, they don’t know about getting in cars with strangers.”

Montano said the staff is walking parents through procedures, making sure that they sign their names and the time when they arrive, and walking the child to a teacher.

“We’ll have someone manning the door until parents take on a more responsible role in doing that,” she said. Teachers will also start making a daily attendance check and compare it with the sign-in sheet, she added.

“Our record was unblemished. This has been an emotional blow to all of us,” she said.

The hardest part of the whole incident, Dunn said Wednesday, was not being able to hold Katy and comfort her until the next day. She says that she and her husband, Bill, stayed up all night.

She found herself worrying that Katy did not have her favorite blanket, which she sleeps with every night. The next morning, Dunn brought the blanket to Orangewood when she picked Katy up.

Dunn said she is not taking her daughter back to the center. “I can’t articulate the despair I felt when they said she was not there.” Katy has been clinging and crying since Monday and has been sleeping with her at night, Dunn said.

Staff writer Lily Eng contributed to this story.