Tip Led Police to Baby Girl Kidnaped From Hospital : Crime: Richmond woman who allegedly posed as a health care worker is arrested. The child, who was stolen in June, is in good condition.

With tip No. 669, Berkeley police months ago had come tantalizingly close to solving the bizarre June kidnaping of a newborn from a hospital maternity ward.

It took tip No. 1,060, received early this week, to finally bring the infant known as Baby Kerri back to the arms of her jubilant 16-year-old mother and result in the arrest of a Richmond woman accused of kidnaping her.

Authorities were expected to file formal charges today against Karen Lea Hughes, 41, who allegedly posed as a health care worker at Alta Bates Hospital and slipped away with the 2-day-old daughter of Jessica Mammini on June 12. Hughes was being held in lieu of $250,000 bail.

Hospital officials said Wednesday that the baby was in good condition and apparently had been adequately cared for. When found in Hughes’ apartment, the 3-month-old child was wearing a long-sleeved white shirt and tiny pearl earrings, authorities said.

Carolyn Kemp, a hospital spokeswoman, said that while there was almost no doubt about the baby’s identity, tests were being performed to match her blood samples with those of Mammini and Kerri’s father, Christian Ray Rosales, 19, a rock band drummer.

On Wednesday, the mother returned with the baby to a celebration at her family home in Gilroy.

“It feels good to have her in my arms,” Mammini told Associated Press. “I think I’m going to be a very overprotective mother.”

The mood was festive as well at Alta Bates Hospital, where well-wishers swamped telephone switchboards and balloons proclaimed “It’s a Girl.” Officials credited widespread public awareness of the case for the crucial tip.

“In the end it was this one person who took the time to make one phone call,” Kemp said.

The recovery of Baby Kerri climaxed an intensive nationwide appeal for help. Scores of volunteers visited shopping malls, airports and stadiums, handing out leaflets describing the baby and her kidnaper.

More than 400,000 flyers were distributed locally and about 52 million postcards were sent nationwide. The case was dramatized twice on the television show “America’s Most Wanted.”

In the end Baby Kerri was found within a few miles of the hospital where her mother had turned the newborn over to a woman posing as a worker for a program that assists low-income mothers. The impostor, who police suspect was Hughes, vanished with the baby.

Until this week the best tip police received came on the night of June 30. A female had been seen with a baby wrapped in a blue bath towel. The description resembled that of the woman who took the baby from Mammini more than two weeks earlier.

Authorities said they traced the car in which the woman was seen to its owner, a man who identified the woman as Hughes. Police showed a driver’s license photo of Hughes to Mammini. But the young mother could not make the identification--and Hughes was not questioned.

“Unfortunately, it was a rather lousy picture,” Police Capt. Phil Doran said Wednesday. “If Jessica had even said, ‘that’s close,’ we could have done more. But that was as far as we could go at the time.”

The case changed dramatically Monday when a neighbor telephoned authorities to raise questions about a woman and a child in a nearby Richmond apartment complex. The woman--the mother of four older children--turned out to be Hughes. The nature of the report was not disclosed.

This time, Doran said, police obtained a better photograph of Hughes and showed it to Mammini, who identified her as the suspect. Officers obtained a search warrant, went to Hughes’ apartment and found Baby Kerri. Hughes was arrested without resistance.

Neighbors told reporters that Hughes had variously described the child as her daughter or goddaughter.

Although it did not directly lead to Hughes’ apprehension, a profile of the probable kidnaper prepared weeks ago by the FBI turned out to closely resemble the woman arrested Tuesday, according to Rick Smith, a bureau spokesman.

The FBI profile said the kidnaper probably would be a woman younger than 25 or older than 40, living within a 25-mile radius of the crime and perhaps having suffered a recent miscarriage. The kidnaper would care for the child as if it were her own and tell others the child was hers or that of a relative, the profile said.

Since the kidnaping, additional security measures have been adopted at Alta Bates Hospital. Access to the maternity ward is limited and guards require visitors to sign in and out. Babies cannot be transported by any worker who does not have an identification badge.