Abandoned Boy’s Identity a Mystery : Search: Police have come up empty in a probe to find guardians of a 2- or 3-year-old left last week at a National City day-care center.

He’s a happy, playful, outgoing little boy with blond hair and deep blue eyes. He’s 2, maybe 3 years old, and he’s always smiling and giggling. He likes to be held.

But does anyone want him? Does anyone know where he belongs? Isn’t there someone he’d reach out to and call Mommy or Daddy?

National City police and county social workers are desperate to find answers to those questions. The boy, whose name might be Eric Wilson, was abandoned by a woman last week, who left him at a National City day-care center.

Hoping someone might recognize him, authorities made a public plea Thursday.

National City Police Detective Timothy Drum said a blond, heavyset woman brought the boy to the ABC Child’s World Pre-School & Kindergarten at 845 Highland Ave. about 1 p.m. July 2. The woman identified herself only as the boy’s grandmother.

Drum said the woman told the day-care center’s owner that she and her daughter had been evicted, and that she needed to have someone watch the boy while she went to look at an apartment a social worker had recommended.

The woman, accompanied by a younger, brown-haired woman, then paid for a couple of hours of supervision.

But when the day-care center’s owner, Eugenia Jones, asked the woman to fill out forms on the boy’s medical history and other information, the woman said she would have to go out to “the cab” to get the necessary documentation.

Jones said that, when she noticed that the woman was walking away, she said to her, “I said, ‘You just can’t leave.’ I said, ‘I don’t even know his name.’ ”

The woman glanced back briefly and responded, “It’s Eric Wilson,” Jones said.

Jones said the woman and her companion walked down the street and out of sight from the day-care center. Jones heard a car door close and a vehicle drive away, but from her office window she could not see what kind of car the two left in.

“She was very polite and very nice,” Jones said. “There was not one thought in my mind that she was going to leave him.”

The boy was very clean and appeared to be well cared for, Jones said.

What was unusual, said Jones, who has operated the day-care center for 12 years, was that the boy didn’t seem to be frightened by the woman’s absence.

“He was real friendly and nice, and he came right to me,” Jones said. “Usually they cry.”

About 5 p.m., a woman identifying herself as the grandmother called the day-care center and told a staffer that someone would be there to pick him up.

But no one ever showed.

Police checks with social workers, people named Wilson and numerous other avenues have turned up nothing, leading investigators to think that the boy may have been kidnaped or brought here from another part of the country.

“If he were local,” Drum said, “I think we would have found more information in the systems we have in the county.”

Drum said he issued a national advisory to law enforcement agencies soon after the boy was reported abandoned. Earlier this week, Social Services workers also notified the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Arlington, Va., and other national agencies.

Although no one is sure whether the ‘grandmother” left in a taxi as she said, authorities are asking cab operators to check their logs to see if they delivered anyone to the day-care center.

The boy speaks only in single words and short phrases, not sentences. So far, he hasn’t said anything to give authorities any clues, Drum said. When asked his name, he mumbled something that sounded like Eric.

Carol Baenziger, a spokeswoman for the county Department of Social Services, encouraged anyone with information to call the Child Abuse Hotline at 560-2191. Although investigators have been struggling to find out where the boy belongs, he has been living contentedly in foster care, showing no apparent feelings of loss or abandonment.

“He is wonderful,” Baenziger said. “He is extremely playful. He seems to be a very happy little boy.”