PLACENTIA : 9-Year-Old Recognized for Heroism

Two months after a gun-wielding woman grabbed him from the Van Buren Elementary School playground, third-grader David Christie occasionally creeps into his parents’ bedroom to get a good night’s sleep.

“He sleeps, but sometimes he gets scared and comes and sleeps on the floor of our room,” said Les Christie, the boy’s father.

On Thursday, Christie videotaped a school assembly at which David, 9, was awarded a crystal plaque and a $500 U.S. Savings Bond for heroism from Westec Security Inc.

David was credited with calmly negotiating his own release after being held for 20 minutes in a park next to the school. The ordeal began as the lunch period was ending April 18. David and a friend were tossing a ball on their way back to class when the woman abducted him.

“I told her at the end if she would let me go, I’d tell the (police officer) to put down his weapon, and so she did,” David recounted then.

Sheila Faye Reed, 30, is being held at Orange County Jail without bail, awaiting a pretrial hearing July 13 on charges of kidnaping, assault with a deadly weapon and having a firearm on school property.

David received the award in front of 540 students on the last day of the school year. In the same year, the students saw the death of a classmate, Ryan Dedrick, 10. Ryan was killed last November in an auto accident.

“We’ve really gone through some things,” Principal Kenneth Lorge said. “Death is never a positive thing, and a kidnaping is never positive, but they turned into positive things for our kids.”

When Ryan died, the students were stunned that such an energetic person their age could be gone so quickly, Lorge said. They learned how precious life is and, with that in mind, the teachers and staff focused on the quality of the children’s lives, encouraging them to take care of themselves.

With the kidnaping, the school reinforced its safety awareness and went over “with a fine-toothed comb” its emergency preparedness program, Lorge said.

“There’s nothing we can do to prevent a crazy person from doing whatever they want to do,” he said. “But at least from our end of it, the safety end, we know we’ve done our job.”

Aside from a jittery week following the April 18 kidnaping, the school has recovered remarkably, Lorge said.

So has David, said his parents, who have not limited David’s activities since the incident.

“The day after, all the parents had their children in vans, taking them to school,” Les Christie said. “Our kids walked to school.”

“David even quoted that lightning doesn’t strike twice,” said his mother, Gretchen Christie.

But older brother Brent, 11, said he feels more protective of David.

“I go with him sometimes to the stores now,” he said.

David politely answered reporters’ questions after the ceremony and posed for pictures before rejoining his classmates for the last activities of the year. The attention he has received has been exhausting, he said.

“I just want it to be regular because I don’t want to answer any more questions,” he said.