Girl, 14, Describes Her Kidnaping Ordeal : Crimes: The Cabrillo Village teen-ager says she hopes the experience will serve as a warning to other children.

The ordeal was over and a 14-year-old girl who was kidnaped Sunday was back home with her parents in Cabrillo Village Tuesday, shaken but grateful that she escaped unharmed.

“We owe it to the Virgin of Guadalupe,” the teary-eyed mother said as she hugged her daughter. “We prayed and prayed. We were prepared for the worst. We didn’t care how she returned, as long as she came back. But she came back without a scratch.”

Sitting under a tree in the front yard of her home, as her mother gently stroked her hair, the girl recounted her ordeal, saying she hopes that other children may learn from her misfortune.

Meanwhile, the man whom she identified as her kidnaper, Gaston Ortiz, 27, of Long Beach remained in Ventura County Jail, booked on suspicion of kidnaping and child molestation. He is expected to be arraigned today.

According to investigators, the girl has said she was not raped by Ortiz, but has told them that he tried to have sex with her at a Riverside motel. She declined to discuss the alleged sexual advances during an interview with The Times.

The girl, who remains unidentified to protect her privacy, said she saw Ortiz speaking to her father on Sunday afternoon shortly before he stopped her on a street in Cabrillo Village while she was on her way to run an errand for her mother. Ortiz was trying to sell her father a bogus raffle ticket, sheriff’s investigators said.

“He told me he was an old friend of my father, and I believed him because I saw him talking to my dad,” the girl said in a trembling voice. He offered her a ride to the store and she accepted, she said.

“He said he would take me to a 7-Eleven store, but instead he took me to a dead-end road. I told him I wanted to go back home, but he told me to get out of the car and look at the trees.”

After looking at the trees, the girl said she again asked Ortiz to take her home. Instead, she said, he grabbed her by the arm and returned to the car with her, then drove her to Riverside against her will.

“We stopped at his mother’s and he made me stay in the car,” she said. “I couldn’t run away because he was in the front yard, looking at me. He brought me some food, but I couldn’t eat.”

She spoke in a soft monotone, fighting back tears. At times she paused and looked into the eyes of her mother, who encouraged her to go on.

“Then he took me to a hotel,” she said. “He had bad intentions, and I tried to escape, but the door was locked. He said he was only 22 years old, that he was only a few years older than me and that it was OK, there was no problem. But I said I didn’t want anything to happen.

“He started yelling at me, ‘Why are you doing this to me? I thought you wanted to do it!’ ”

They spent the night in the Riverside motel, then drove to the house of another of Ortiz’s relatives, who advised Ortiz to drive the girl back to Cabrillo Village, she recounted. She said Ortiz then called her mother.

“He called home and talked to my mom. I was listening,” she said. “But when I heard mom’s voice, I hung up the phone. I could hear she was so worried because I didn’t go home. I said I was too embarrassed to go home.”

After the brief telephone call to the girl’s mother, Ortiz headed back to Ventura and dropped the girl off at Korb’s Trading Post in east Ventura on Monday afternoon, telling her to wait for him for an hour while he took care of some business.

“He told me not to tell anybody what happened,” she said. “As soon as he left I started looking for a public phone. The store employee said I could use her phone so I called mom and she picked me up.”

Ortiz was arrested minutes later in the parking lot of Motel 6 on Johnson Drive. Almost 24 hours had gone by since he had picked up the girl. Sheriff’s detectives said he has denied that there was any physical contact between him and the girl at the Riverside motel.

“She said there was touching in the hotel room, which Ortiz denies,” a detective said. “Basically, it’s his word against hers.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Lela M. Henke-Dobroth said Tuesday that her office had not reviewed the case and officials could not speculate on what charges, if any, may eventually be filed against the suspect.

“Sexual molestation could be anything from rape to simple touching,” Henke-Dobroth said. “It depends on what words are being said while the contact is taking place, where it’s happening, and the position of the victim and the suspect.”

The girl said she hopes that other children will learn from her experience.

“It doesn’t matter if they say they are real good friends with your parents, never get into a car with them unless you have your parents’ permission,” she said. “Even if they say they talked to your parents, you have to hear it with your own ears.”