Kidnaped Girl Is Found Unharmed : Crime: Authorities discover the 7-year-old locked in a closet in a Hacienda Heights apartment. Three of five suspects in the abduction are captured.

A 7-year-old girl kidnaped a week ago at knifepoint from her grandmother’s La Puente home was found locked in a closet in a Hacienda Heights apartment complex early Friday by sheriff’s deputies and FBI agents. The girl apparently was physically unharmed.

Phone calls demanding $500,000 in ransom from the grandmother led deputies from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Asian Organized Crime Unit to an apartment complex at 18700 E. Colima Road, where a surveillance team watched three of five suspects in the abduction drive off in a rental car about 3:45 a.m., officials said.

As sheriff’s patrol cars sped down the Pomona Freeway in pursuit of the alleged kidnapers, detectives and FBI agents stormed Apartment 205 and found the child--identified only as Melodie during a news conference Friday--unharmed in a locked closet.

The rental car was forced to a halt in the middle of a railroad crossing near Fairway Drive and the freeway because a freight train was stalled on the tracks awaiting repairs. The three occupants of the car ran away but were stopped by deputies minutes after the car was demolished by a second train rolling down a parallel set of tracks.

Cao Jian, 31, of Kansas, Fa Yi Ni, 35, of New Jersey and De Rew Zheng, 28, of New York were booked for investigation of kidnaping and attempted murder. They were jailed in lieu of $1.5 million bail each.

Two other suspects, including a 24-year-old woman, were still at large. Sheriff Sherman Block urged anyone with information to come forward.

“There is a reluctance in the Asian community to report victimization,” Block told reporters. “I hope the success of this investigation conveys to the Asian community that law enforcement in this country is not the same as in other parts of the world.”

Melodie took the podium to read a message that she had written.

“Thank you police for saving my life,” she said in halting English as she stood on a chair so she could see over a forest of microphones.

She added that her captors had not abused her and had fed her noodles and Chinese bread.

“They were not very mean at first. They pretended they were kind, but I knew they were not,” she said.

Melodie said she spent most of her time in the closet asleep.

According to sheriff’s Sgt. Ron Spear, five people, some wielding butcher knives, burst into the home of Melodie’s 60-year-grandmother on East Las Vecinas Drive in La Puente on Oct. 22 about 9:20 p.m. The intruders bound Melodie and her grandmother and fled with the third-grader in tow after telling the woman to come up with $500,000, or she would never see her granddaughter alive again.

Block said Melodie’s grandfather heads a successful business in Taiwan.

“We do know that there are business interests in Taiwan in the family that could have come up with the $500,000,” Block said.

Melodie’s mother was with the grandfather in Taiwan at the time of the kidnaping, Block said.

Neighbors did not recall hearing anything unusual, or sounds of alarm, the night of the abduction, officers said.

The grandmother worked herself free of her bonds and contacted friends, who urged her to notify authorities. She went to the Industry sheriff’s station last Saturday, Block said.

About 75 people were involved in the weeklong investigation, including FBI and immigration agents and community volunteers who helped translate telephoned demands from Chinese to English.