Parents Are Reunited With Missing Baby : Family: Infant is retrieved from a man in Tijuana and placed in county custody. Couple admitted being so drunk they could not remember where they left their 8-month-old girl.

A Bell Gardens couple who admitted being so drunk after a party that they might have left their missing baby at a taco stand were reunited with the infant in Tijuana, their attorney said Thursday.

Micaele Velasquez, 38, and David Prado, 37, retrieved their 8-month-old daughter, Jandel, from a man in Tijuana who had seen the case reported on television in the border city, East Los Angeles attorney Raul Ayala said.

The child was placed in the care of a county agency while the incident is under investigation, authorities said.

The couple told police Sunday that they had gone to a party Saturday night and left the child with Velasquez’s daughter, Diana, 20, at the family’s home in the 6500 block of Ajax Avenue. Diana Velasquez remembered giving her baby sister a bottle around midnight and putting her in a crib, but that was the last time the family saw the child until Wednesday, Ayala said.

The couple told police they had been so drunk when they returned home that they could have taken the baby with them to a taco stand in the nearby city of Bell. But they really could not remember anything about the evening.

At a news conference Thursday in front of the Bell Gardens police station, Ayala said there was no evidence that the parents lost their child at the taco stand. He said unknown persons took the baby.

Ayala declined to discuss at length who might have been responsible for the apparent abduction, or the motive behind it. He also fended off questions about the people who found the baby in Tijuana and whether members of the Bell Gardens family know them.

The couple’s 11-year-old son told reporters earlier in the week that the infant may have been abducted by a disgruntled family member and taken to Tijuana. At the time, Ayala dismissed that as fanciful speculation by a boy who, he said, did not know any of the facts. The lawyer did not explain why it was, then, that the baby turned up in Tijuana.

“I have no comment on that,” he said.

On Tuesday, XEWT (Channel 12) in Tijuana broadcast a story about the missing child and provided the parents’ phone number.

The parents said a man called them from Tijuana shortly after 9 p.m. Wednesday and said he had their baby, Bell Gardens Police Sgt. Jerry Winfrey said. The couple immediately drove to Tijuana and contacted the man, who said his brother had found the baby on Sunday or Monday in a box on his doorstep, Winfrey said.

The man cared for the child until he saw the television broadcast and called the parents, the sergeant said.

Without calling police, Ayala, or anyone else, Velasquez and Prado drove to Mexico, satisfied the man that they were the parents, and picked up their child, the attorney said.

“There was no ransom,” Ayala said. “There was no extortion. There were no demands made.”

The couple met with police Thursday, but left the station without speaking to reporters.

A spokesman for XEWT confirmed that the station had broadcast a brief account of the girl’s disappearance as part of a public service announcement.

“We understand that as a result of the broadcast the girl was able to be reunited with her parents. But it is unclear to us exactly how it came about,” said Ramon Aguilar, the spokesman.

The child will remain in the custody of the Los Angeles County Department of Children’s Services, Winfrey said, pending results of a joint investigation by the FBI and Bell Gardens police.

Times staff writer Ron Russell contributed to this story.