Teen-Age Girl Freed; Man, 27, Is Arrested : Abduction: The eighth-grader is released at an east Ventura clothing store. She had been missing for 24 hours. The arrest is made at a nearby motel parking lot.

The overnight abduction of a Cabrillo Village girl ended Monday when the 14-year-old was released physically uninjured, and authorities arrested a Long Beach man on suspicion of kidnaping and child molestation, authorities said.

The Saticoy girl was freed about 4 p.m. at an east Ventura clothing store, ending 24 hours of terror for her and her family.

About half an hour later, sheriff’s investigators arrested Gaston Ortiz, 27, in the parking lot of a nearby motel. The officers, responding to a complaint that Ortiz had assaulted another woman in a parking lot, recognized his car as the one that had picked up the girl the day before, authorities said.

A second man arrested after fleeing the Johnson Drive motel was wanted for violation of probation but apparently was not involved in the alleged crimes against the girl, Lt. Joe Harwell said.

The girl, a Ventura eighth-grader, said she was seized by Ortiz after accepting a ride to a market to cash a check for her mother, authorities said. She was held overnight in a motel in Riverside County near the home of Ortiz’s mother, authorities said.

Ortiz’s brother said in an interview Monday that Ortiz had visited his mother’s home Sunday evening and at one point took food to his car but did not explain why.

The girl was reunited with her family early Monday evening before being interviewed by investigators for about three hours.

“She’s obviously very upset emotionally. But she does not appear to be injured,” Harwell said.

The Sheriff’s Department will ask that kidnaping and molestation charges be filed, but apparently no rape occurred, he said. The girl was taken to the Ventura County Medical Center for a physical examination, he said.

The incident began when the suspect asked the girl’s father, a citrus packer in Santa Paula, if he would buy a raffle ticket.

For more than a week, the man had been peddling $20 tickets for a bogus raffle in which the prize was a new pickup truck. One El Rio man who bought a ticket had memorized his license plate, Harwell said.

“He said he had 14 tickets left to sell and if I bought one of these 14 I was guaranteed to win,” the father said. “I suspected something immediately and told him I had no money.”

The father remembered that the man had noticed his daughter as she was entering their condominium.

A few minutes later, the girl was sent on an errand to the store. That was the last the family had seen of her before Monday.

The girl’s best friend said that neighborhood children later claimed to have heard the suspect say to the victim: “Your father told me to drive you to the market.”

Witnesses later told detectives that they saw the girl get into a gray, late-model Mercury Cougar before she disappeared. Detectives found that a 1986 Mercury was registered to Ortiz at a Long Beach address, Harwell said.

“She apparently was not forced into the car,” Harwell said. “The store was closed in Cabrillo Village. I think she may have been looking for a ride to another one.”

When the girl did not promptly return, the family drove around the neighborhood for nearly two hours but found nothing. The family then called police.

The girl’s 31-year-old mother said she stayed by her phone all night and remained until her daughter called after her release.

“I imagined the worst. That she was dead. That she was running from someone. I saw her covered in blood,” the mother said.

The mother said she received three calls Monday morning that she thought were from the kidnaper. Twice someone hung up without saying a word, she said. A third call came at 11 a.m.

“He said, ‘I’m with your daughter and she’s fine,’ ” said the mother, who asked the whereabouts of her daughter.

“He just said, ‘In the house,’ ” she said. He then hung up, she said.

Less than an hour before their daughter was found, the mother was at home waiting by the phone, fielding calls from friends and repeatedly crying as she recounted the situation.

Along the wall were family photos, including a portrait of her daughter at age 7 in pigtails and with a bright smile.

The parents both said they usually kept their daughter home so she would not get in trouble with the troublemakers of the neighborhood.

The girl “realizes there are dangers and hazards in this area,” said the girl’s grandmother.

Three weeks ago two Cabrillo Village men were killed in a drive-by shooting by alleged gang members as they were leaving a baptism party.

Ortiz, his wife and young daughter had been living in temporary quarters in Oxnard and Ventura for a month, his family said Monday evening.

His wife, Lourdes Paramo de Ortiz, said she spent Sunday night with her daughter and brother at the family’s room at Motel 6. She said her husband spent Sunday night in Riverside with his mother.

“It’s all a big misunderstanding, they got the wrong guy,” Ortiz’s wife said.

Times staff writer Santiago O’Donnell and correspondent Christopher Pummer contributed to this report.