Kidnaped Boy Found Safe Near L.A.; 2 Held in Alleged Ransom Plot

A 16-year-old boy kidnaped two weeks ago in Redwood City has been found unharmed in Bell and two men have been arrested after picking up $100,000 in ransom money near the Grand Central Market in downtown Los Angeles, police said Thursday.

Juan Ruben Chavez, a sophomore at Woodside High School in Redwood City, telephoned his family at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday and told his aunt, Martha Chavez, that he was fine, she said. She said that when she asked how he had weathered his ordeal, he told her, “I prayed a lot, like mother taught me to.”

Investigators said Octavio Valderosa, 40, and Jose Gonzales, 22, were unaware that undercover officers were present when the two Mexican nationals picked up the ransom money at 3rd Street and Broadway on Wednesday afternoon.

The officers trailed the suspects to a home in the 1600 block of East 84th Street, where Valderosa and Gonzales were arrested about 5 p.m. After questioning the suspects, officers went to an apartment in Bell, where they found the boy.

“They threatened me a lot,” the boy said of his abductors Thursday. “They told me that if I did anything stupid, I’d be killed. . . . (They) knew I could identify them, so I thought I would be shot.”

Police declined to provide many details about the case. But preliminary reports indicated either that the boy had been left bound in the apartment or that someone left to guard him fled before officers arrived. Why the boy was kidnaped remained something of a mystery.

“The boy’s family owns a bar,” said Howard Baker, a spokesman for the Redwood City Police Department. “We’re not talking about multimillionaires here. Obviously, there’s more to it.”

Baker declined to speculate further.

Salud Chavez, the boy’s mother, said during a telephone interview Thursday that she had never heard of the suspects and had no idea why her son was abducted. She said her family has some land in Mexico--”a little bit, a little place”--but she doesn’t think it had anything to do with the kidnaping.

The boy reportedly went to school on March 14, but left without attending class. A few hours later, his parents noticed his schoolbooks and his prized Raiders jacket in his room, but he was nowhere to be found. Juan never showed up for his after-school job at a local video rental store.

Investigators say that about 9:40 that night, a Spanish-speaking man called the boy’s home and told his parents, Ruben and Salud Chavez, that unless they raised $100,000 in three days, their son would be killed. The family relayed the information to Redwood City police. Within hours, the FBI was brought into the case.

Detectives said the three-day deadline passed without the family hearing from the kidnapers.

But in the days that followed, Salud Chavez said, the kidnapers permitted her son to call his family three or four times. She said the boy spoke with his father each time until last Sunday, when he talked with her.

“They let him talk for a minute and he asked how we were,” she recalled. “I asked him if he was OK, and he just said, ‘Ah . . .’ in a very sad voice. (I told him) that we loved him a lot and prayed for him and commended (the situation) to God.”

Without providing any specifics, police indicated that at some point, apparently during one of the telephone calls to the family, the kidnapers spelled out how the ransom money was to be delivered.

Salud Chavez said her husband drove to Los Angeles earlier this week, apparently to participate in the rendezvous, along with officers from the Los Angeles Police Department and FBI agents.

Investigators indicated that about 4 p.m. Wednesday, as undercover agents and police officers watched, the money was handed over to the suspects. The arrests occurred about an hour later, and the suspects were booked at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Parker Center jail on suspicion of kidnaping. Bail for each was set at $110,000.

Interrogation of the pair led authorities to a small, second-floor apartment in a modest complex on Wilcox Avenue in Bell, where the two men reportedly had been living.

“There were two guys, one about 40, the other about 20, who moved in there a few months ago,” said George Roman, 14, who lives in the first-floor unit directly below. “They never talked to nobody. . . .

“They weren’t there a lot, but when they were, they made noise all night,” Roman said. “It seemed like they never went to sleep.”

Jesus Flores, who lives next door to Roman, said the two men drove a car with Mexican license plates. “Someone said they came from TJ (Tijuana),” Flores said.

No one interviewed in the complex seemed aware that Juan Chavez had been held there until Los Angeles police and FBI agents arrived en masse shortly after 5 p.m. on Wednesday.

“There were guns all over the place,” Roman said. “They knocked on the door and then they kicked it down. That was about it.”

Flores said he saw the Chavez boy standing outside a few minutes later, waiting to get into one of the agents’ cars.

“He didn’t look scared at all,” Flores said. “He looked real happy that they had found him.”

Times staff writer Nieson Himmel contributed to this story.