El Monte Boy, 11, Reunited With Family : Crime: The youth was found Saturday by police at an Iowa truck stop. He had been missing since Wednesday, after he accepted a ride home from an acquaintance.

An 11-year-old El Monte boy was reunited with his family Sunday evening, four days after allegedly being abducted by an acquaintance and taken on a cross-country car trip with three Mexican boys that ended at an Iowa truck stop, authorities said.

Raymond Lauriano arrived in good spirits at Ontario International Airport. He was “treated pretty good,” he said, during the ordeal that began Wednesday night, when he accepted a ride from a man identified by police as Javier Hernandez Gonzalez, a 23-year-old transient. He had befriended children in the boy’s apartment complex during the past few months.

“He told me he was going to take me to get his motorcycle,” Raymond told reporters, as he was surrounded by tearful family members.

The boy was the first passenger off the plane, and his relatives mobbed him at the foot of the jet’s ramp and carried him into the terminal on their shoulders.

Raymond said he tried to escape several times at rest stops, but every time, “he pulled me and pushed me into the car.” Raymond said he was struck only once by Gonzalez, in the chest, when he put a quarter in a pay phone to call police.

Iowa state troopers arrested Gonzalez and held him on auto theft charges. El Monte police officials said they plan to extradite Gonzalez to California, where he faces charges of kidnaping and auto theft.

Family and friends of Raymond launched an intensive search for the fifth-grader when he failed to return home Wednesday. Police officers worked dawn to dusk going door to door asking if anyone had information on his whereabouts. Flyers were tacked up throughout the neighborhood and a $2,000 reward was offered for the boy’s safe return, said his sister, Eloisa Ramirez.

The search did not end until Iowa State Patrol troopers received a call from a farmer Saturday morning who was concerned about a man and four boys who were panhandling for gas money at a truck stop near Malcom, Iowa, about 50 miles east of Des Moines. Trooper Larry Petersen, who got the call, said he stopped the suspect just as he and the boys were leaving.

Gonzalez was arrested later a few miles from the truck stop. Only one of the car’s occupants, Raymond, spoke English.

“I put the 11-year-old in my car and he started crying,” Petersen said. “He told me he was probably wanted in El Monte.”

The boy said he had known Gonzalez for about seven months, so he did not hesitate when he was offered a ride home with the three Mexican boys, ages 11, 12 and 13, who were in the car, the trooper said. Raymond said he fell asleep in the car, and awoke to find Gonzalez had driven to Nevada.

Raymond told Petersen that he had tried to get away twice, trying to elude him at rest stops. “He was absolutely petrified of this guy,” Petersen said.

Petersen said he was unsure why Gonzalez was taking the boys across the country, except that he may have been bound for Chicago. The trooper said the other three boys were being kept at a youth shelter while officials work with the Mexican Consulate to find the boys’ parents in Tijuana. Authorities in Iowa and California were trying to determine whether the Mexican boys were kidnaped or had agreed to accompany Gonzalez.