HUNTINGTON BEACH : Missing Girl Turns Up at Friend’s Home

A missing girl who was feared kidnaped turned up Friday at the home of a schoolmate, where she had stayed overnight while police helicopters and bloodhounds searched the neighborhood.

At 6:30 a.m., police called off an intensive search for 6-year-old Sandra Fernandez in the area surrounding Oak View Elementary School, where she attends first grade, said Lt. Ed McErlain.

Reyna Fernandez, the girl’s mother, returned home from work at 4 p.m. Thursday and discovered that Sandra had not yet returned from school. Classes at Oak View had been dismissed at noon.

Thursday night, Carlos Fernandez, Sandra’s father, and his wife attended a Neighborhood Watch group meeting at Oak View, after which they told school Principal Joan Buffehr that their daughter was missing.

“They knocked on my door asking for help,” Buffehr recalled. “They said, ‘Our little girl is missing.’ ”

Bloodhounds traced Sandra’s scent to an alley, where police feared she may have been loaded into a vehicle and kidnaped, McErlain said.

Meanwhile, Buffehr said, she and other school officials helped police phone the homes of Sandra’s classmates.

But it was through word of mouth that the mother at whose home Sandra spent the night learned that police were searching for a girl who matched Sandra’s description, McErlain said.

“She just went home with another kid,” Buffehr said Friday. “It apparently was just one of those things that kids do.”

A tightknit community was the key to ending the drama quickly, Buffehr said. The Oak View area comprises the city’s largest enclave of Latino residents, who recently have bound together to prevent crime and help each other.