Girl, 17, Admits Kidnaping Was a Hoax : Sun Valley: Maria Kaffatos spent the weekend with a friend after leaving behind evidence to suggest an abduction.

A 17-year-old Sun Valley girl who disappeared for three days, then showed up at a hospital Monday night claiming she had been kidnaped, made up the tale of abduction because she “needed time to herself,” police said.

Police learned of the hoax after they re-interviewed Maria Kaffatos a day after she was found at Pacifica Hospital of the Valley in Sun Valley, Los Angeles Police Lt. Fred Nixon said.

“Maria admitted that she had not been kidnaped,” Nixon said. “She stated that she needed time to herself, so she called a friend to pick her up after leaving her house. She stayed with this friend until Monday evening.”

Kaffatos’ parents reported her missing Friday night after she failed to show up at her family’s restaurant for work.

Police conducted a kidnap investigation after her father found the girl’s shoe and purse along a street she normally traveled between her home and the restaurant.

Kaffatos, a student at Burbank High School, briefly called her family twice sounding shaken but did not mention ransom demands, police said.

Monday night, the girl turned up at the hospital with minor bruises on her body. She told police a man forced her into a car in which another man and a woman were waiting, then drove her to downtown Los Angeles. Kaffatos told police that her captors never made ransom demands and only wanted the address and phone number of a person she knew.

She had told police that she was later released and spent the night in a park area downtown. She said a stranger named Jerry drove her to Sun Valley, where she called friends from a pay phone. Her friends took her to the hospital.

Kaffatos told police she was not physically assaulted and could not remember how she received the bruises on her body.

Tuesday, detectives learned that she made up the abduction story, inflicted the wounds herself and intentionally left her shoe and purse on the street.

“That was just to bolster the idea that she had been kidnaped,” Nixon said.

The girl spent the weekend with a friend who lives in the Sun Valley area and also spent some time in downtown Los Angeles.

The exact amount of police time and resources exerted in the search had not been computed, but it was “quite a lot of manpower, manpower that we cannot afford to expend on a hoax,” Nixon said.

No charges are expected to be filed against the girl.

“While that possibility exists, we don’t plan any criminal charges at this time,” Nixon said. “We’re very happy to get her back safely.”