Missing Anaheim Boy Is Safe in Mexico City

A 14-year-old who disappeared 17 days ago, apparently despondent about his facial scars, surprised relatives here and in Mexico when he showed up at the home of an aunt and uncle in Mexico City late Monday night.

Francisco Vargas Jr., who left home on a bicycle with only $50, told relatives that he had taken the bus from Orange County and simply walked from the Mexico City bus station to an uncle’s home in a neighborhood where he had grown up, according to his aunt, Inez Mendoza, who lives in Anaheim.

“He never called anyone there or here,” Mendoza said. “But he just showed up. He told my brother, the boy’s uncle, that he went all the way alone. He used a bus.”

Francisco “doesn’t want to talk to his father or mother,” Mendoza said, and although he is in good health, he also refuses to discuss the 2,000-mile journey with relatives.

“One thing is certain,” his aunt said. “He doesn’t want to return to the United States. My brother asked him, but he answered, ‘Why? If I can’t get cured, what for?’ ”

“At least we know he’s safe and with my brother in Mexico City,” Mendoza said. “Francisco’s father has urged the boy’s uncle to try to get as much information as possible from him during the next few days.”

A press officer at the Mexican Consulate in San Diego said that bus fare for the 2 1/2-day journey from Tijuana to Mexico City is about $87.

“I don’t think he could have gotten far with just $50,” Miguel Escobar, the press officer said. “You have to at least spend a couple of days on the road and you have to eat. He must have gotten some other source of money or had someone buy him food.”

Teachers and administrators at South Junior High School, where Francisco is an eighth-grader, expressed joy that the student they described as respectful and quiet had been found safe.

“We’ve been very worried,” said Lynn V. West, the assistant principal. “There could have been trouble because Francisco was not street smart, and we wanted to be certain that he was absolutely safe.”

Francisco left home on April 28 after his parents, who had brought him to the United States promising that he would get corrective surgery here, told him they couldn’t find a doctor that they could afford.

Francisco suffered the burns a year ago in Mexico City in a fire started by neighborhood children playing with matches, his mother said.

Since the first publicity about the boy, two Newport Beach surgeons have volunteered their services at no charge. Also, Gene Cunningham of Newport Beach, who is a member of the El Bekal Shriners Temple in Anaheim, has offered help with travel and medical costs through the Shriners’ network of 22 hospitals serving crippled children.

“We have three burn centers that can help this boy,” Cunningham said. “Nothing can please the Shriners more than to help out a young boy like this.”

“It’s ironic that (hospital) access has been made available at a point where the child is unavailable,” said Dr. Charles Grob, director of the adolescent psychiatry unit at UCI Medical Center in Orange.

Grob said that Francisco may have suffered from being uprooted and moved to an environment where he did not speak the language and found himself in a lower economic level. Francisco’s return to his neighborhood in Mexico City was probably his way of returning to an area where “he’s had longstanding relationships,” Grob said.

The day he left, he and his mother, Felipa Pineda Vargas, sat down and had a serious talk, she said. Her son expressed disappointment with his school performance, especially with his slow progress in learning English.

“He told me that he didn’t want to attend school anymore because of problems with English. He was unhappy with us, because we couldn’t get a doctor to help repair the scar,” the boy’s mother said.

Despite his anxiety, Vargas said she had to go to her job as a janitor in a beauty salon in Santa Ana when her employer called that day.

“I made some food for him, and I told him to eat. Then, I had to leave. He said absolutely nothing further about anything,” she said.