Boy Missing 40 Hours Found Safe on Street : Search: Officer says child, 4, wandered L.A. But boy says a man took him from bus station and cared for him.

A 4-year-old boy who police said survived a 40-hour odyssey of wandering the streets of Downtown Los Angeles was reunited with his mother early Sunday morning after being found by a day laborer who bought the boy a meal and telephoned authorities.

Matthew Vera, a thin child with dark, smiling brown eyes, was unharmed and undaunted by the experience, according to doctors and his family. By midmorning Sunday, he was playing in his grandmother’s crowded, threadbare home in the east San Fernando Valley.

The boy told family members and a reporter that a man he met at the bus station--a man he called el Patito, the Little Duck--took him to the beach, to his house to watch television, fed and bathed him and bought him clothes. When he was found, Matthew was wearing a sweater and jeans, different clothes from those he had had on when he disappeared.

The boy vanished just after dawn Friday at the Downtown Greyhound bus terminal, where he and his mother, Rosa Sanchez, had come from Stockton to move in with the grandmother in Pacoima. He was back in his mother’s arms, cold and exhausted, about 1 a.m. Sunday after Jose Jimenez, a Mexican immigrant, found him wandering on Pico Boulevard, about five miles west of the bus station, about 10:30 p.m. Saturday.

The rescue was greeted with a special relief during a weekend in which the body of another child, Polly Klaas, missing from her Petaluma home for two months, was found. Two weeks earlier in Woodland Hills, a missing 8-year-old girl was found strangled to death in the apartment of her father’s neighbor, who was charged in her murder.

“I had thought he was dead,” said Sanchez, who said she had spent the last two days crying and praying for Matthew to return. “When I held him in my arms, it was as if he had been born again.”

Sanchez, who has four other children, rushed to the Los Angeles Police Department’s Newton Division station after receiving a telephone call that the boy had been found, anxious because she was not sure whether he had been harmed. At the station, a sleepy Matthew broke into a wide smile at the sight of his mother.

In his grandmother’s back yard, as chickens pecked and scratched in a pen, Matthew played with his 15 cousins Sunday and impersonated his favorite “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” television character, Jason, while the family gathered to celebrate his return with a feast of carne asada.

Police said that they were amazed--and thankful--that no harm had come to Matthew during his odyssey.

“I’m just glad that somebody with a heart found him first,” said Police Sgt. Alexander Gomez.

It was not immediately clear what the little boy did, or who he met, during the hours he was missing.

“When questioned what he did all the time, he said he just walked and walked,” Gomez said.

But Matthew told a reporter that before Jimenez found him, he met a stranger at the bus station, and said the man took him to the beach.

He said the man, whom he called el Patito , also took him to his house, where they watched television programs, including Matthew’s “Power Rangers.” Matthew said the man took him shopping, buying him a sweater and a pair of jeans.

He also said that el Patito fed him beans and bathed him in a house where other kids were.

Then Matthew said that he fell asleep in a cab with el Patito and was inside a cab with him when el Patito told him that he did not want him anymore, and that he should go.

When a reporter related that story to Gomez, he said it was the first mention he had heard of el Patito, and suggested that the story was the product of a 4-year-old’s imagination.

Gomez said that Matthew mentioned falling asleep in a cab, but said the boy could not remember going anywhere in the cab. “We don’t know whether it was an abandoned vehicle or what,” Gomez said.

Police Capt. Bob Gale said he doubted that Matthew could have wandered the street for nearly two full days without any adult intervention, or have gotten so far from the bus station on his own.

Matthew’s mother said she believed her child’s story.

“I think somewhere, somehow, el Patito exists,” she said.

Matthew’s aunt, Raquel Perez, said: “Matthew has given us an impression of el Patito as a kind man, a friend.”

Matthew’s mother said that when he disappeared Friday, he was wearing a blue sweater, a green striped T-shirt and blue jeans. When they were reunited, she said, he was wearing a pair of black ripped jeans and a plain black sweater-shirt--clothes he said el Patito bought him. Family members guessed that the stranger bought the clothing in some kind of thrift store.

Gale said a doctor’s examination found that Matthew was not molested or otherwise injured.

Matthew disappeared from his mother’s sight at the bus terminal after he stomped off in anger when she refused to give him a quarter for a video game.

A search by more than 100 officers proved fruitless.

Saturday night, Jimenez saw the boy walking down Pico. Although the missing boy’s picture had been broadcast on television that day, Jimenez had not seen it. He said he was simply curious about why a little boy was out on the street alone late at night.

“The little boy looked lost, looked tired, scared and hungry,” Gomez said.

Police said Jimenez spent his last few dollars buying a hamburger and milk for the hungry boy. Then he phoned police.

Jimenez told a reporter Sunday that he was “very happy” he was able to help the family.

“We consider him a hero,” Gomez said.

Sunday morning, a candle was still burning at the Sanchez home near pictures of the Virgin of Guadalupe and a smaller picture of Matthew.

“In the last two days, all we did was pray. We never lost faith,” Sanchez said.

Despite a lack of sleep, Matthew was full of energy.

“He is usually well-mannered but today is a bit rude and not listening to me,” his mother said.