Mother of Baby Left in Local Mall Is Arrested : Crime: The Reseda woman is accused of abandoning her 18-month-old child in West Hills.

The mother of an 18-month-old girl found at a West Hills mall Friday was arrested on suspicion of child abandonment as she emerged from Sunday services at a church with another daughter, aged 5 months, authorities said.

Hang Tran, a 31-year-old Reseda resident, was booked at the Van Nuys jail and is being held on $10,000 bail, said Sgt. Dan Mastro of the Police Department’s West Valley station.

Police began tracking down leads Friday using business cards left with eight milk-filled baby bottles in a bag in the shopping cart where store employees found Trinh Tran napping in the hardware section of the Target discount store at Fallbrook Mall about 11 a.m.

Store officials contacted police after they could not locate the parents over the store’s intercom system.

The business cards contained the name of a physician who provided police with an address in Reseda. After police tried for two days, Officer Ruth Barnes on Sunday morning went to the address and met a woman who identified Trinh as her niece from a newspaper photograph, Mastro said.

The relative then led Barnes to the First Baptist Church of Reseda where Tran was attending a Sunday service held for Vietnamese members, Mastro said.

Tran’s second child, 5-month-old Melissa Tran, joined her sister at the Los Angeles County Department of Child Services, Mastro said. Melissa could be placed with relatives pending a background check, Mastro said, although it was unclear what will happen to the older girl.

“I think this is a great thing that happened,” said Mastro, referring to finding Tran. “If she (Tran) needs help she can get it, and her children will no longer be placed in danger.”

Barnes said she was relieved to find Tran because she feared something may have happened to the mother. She couldn’t comprehend, Barnes said, why anyone would abandon such a beautiful child, who was found wearing a pink dress with lace collar. “They’re both such cute little babies,” she said.

Police say they believe that Tran may have been living with relatives in Reseda in an attempt to hide from her recently divorced husband, Mastro said.

The Rev. James A. Gabor, who heads the Baptist church at Yolanda Avenue and Sherman Way, said he heard news reports about the abandoned child but had never met Tran. About 70 to 80 Vietnamese people attend weekly services at the church, which are held weekly from 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m., he said.

In an interview with KNBC-TV, a man who identified himself as Tran’s brother-in-law said Tran misplaced her child and was unable to explain her situation or request help from store employees because she cannot speak English.

Target manager Mark Fleer said no one came forward to claim the child after a 1 1/2-hour search by mall management and security officers who extended the search beyond the store to all the stores in the mall.

“From the time the child was located until the police left three hours later, there was no one who attempted to locate a lost child that we were aware of,” Fleer said.