Boy, 2, Found Wandering on Anaheim Street

A 2-year-old boy clad in pajamas and red socks was found wandering alone near an Anaheim street intersection Monday and taken by police to Orangewood Children’s Home in Orange.

The blond, blue-eyed boy, who told police his name is Raymond and his mother’s name is “Mommy,” was seen wandering near Orangewood Avenue and Harbor Boulevard about 7:20 a.m., Anaheim Police Sgt. Ken Brott said.

“He was too young to tell us who he is,” Brott said.

Gordon Andahl, Orangewood Children’s Home program manager, said the boy appears to be in good health and spent Monday morning in the toy room at Orangewood, apparently having a good time.

Raymond weighs about 40 pounds and stands about three feet tall. When found, he was wearing a white T-shirt, blue pajamas and red socks, Andahl said. Orangewood believes that the boy is about 2 1/2 years old.

Typically, lost children are taken to a police station. But because of the boy’s age, police were concerned about his care, and transferred the tot to Orangewood, a shelter for abused and abandoned children.

Anaheim police have classified the boy’s discovery as a child found, not an abandonment.

“He appeared very healthy and he was very active,” Andahl said. “We have a little room with lots of toys and he found a football and he was throwing it all around, having a good time.”

The street corner where young Raymond was found is near a number of large apartment complexes, and Andahl and police believe that the child may have strayed from one of them.

“It happens in the community frequently,” Andahl said. “Usually it’s like a baby-sitter doesn’t show up or the baby-sitting arrangements fell through somehow. And sometimes we don’t hear from the parents until 8 or 9 o’clock at night. They come home, start searching and scout the neighborhood, and then call police.”

In cases like this, Andahl said authorities usually wait three days to give parents a chance to discover the child’s disappearance before Orangewood seeks a judge’s permission to release a photograph of the child and make an appeal to the public for information.