Mothers of Two Infants Foil Child-Snatchers : Crime: A man and woman police believe are working together have struck twice in same Buena Park strip mall. They first compliment the babies and then try to take them, snatching one from a shopping cart.

A man and woman have been trying to kidnap babies from their mothers at a local shopping center in the past eight days, once even tugging an infant from a grocery cart, police said Thursday.

Sgt. Robert R. Chaney Jr. said the man and woman, both in their 50s, each have been alone when they approached mothers in a 12-store strip mall at Ball Road and Valley View Street. But police said they believe the two are working together.

In both attacks, the mothers had one infant and one toddler in tow. The man or woman approached and complimented the babies, then tried to snatch them.

“We have to assume that they could strike again,” Chaney said.

The latest incident occurred about 10:30 a.m. Tuesday as Lari Markestein of Los Alamitos walked toward a Music Plus record store with her 2-month-old daughter and her 2-year-old son. A woman approached and asked which store Markestein was going to, Chaney said.

Then, Markestein said, the woman “kept saying what a pretty baby she was. She just tried to hold her, and I wouldn’t let her.” The woman “got too close and was touching the kids a little too much. Normally, people don’t do that.”

The woman followed them into the store and continued to trail them, asking several questions about the baby and and demanding to hold her.

Markestein, 25, said she told the woman “I didn’t feel comfortable and wouldn’t let her have the baby.”

At the same time, Markestein said, she was watching out for her son.

“He was walking around the store, and that was concerning me.”

When a clerk walked up to them, the woman broke off the conversation, left the store and drove off in a silver, mid-sized car.

Markestein said she feared that if the woman had gotten hold of her daughter, she never would have seen the child again.

At home in Los Alamitos, Markestein told her husband about the incident, and he telephoned police, who told them that a similar incident had taken place the week before.

The other kidnaping attempt occurred about 10:30 a.m. on Dec. 2. as Kathy Rapp of Buena Park was leaving a Ralphs grocery store about 200 feet from the Music Plus, Chaney said.

Markestein said that if she had known a similar event had taken place at the shopping center, “I would have been a little more cautious.”

Rapp was pushing a shopping cart full of groceries, with her 5-month-old daughter in the cart’s child seat and her 2-year-old daughter walking beside.

A man approached and tried to strike up a conversation about the infant, calling her beautiful and asking her age. When Rapp turned toward the man, he had disappeared.

She turned to unlock the car and when she turned around, the man was grabbing the baby from the cart. Rapp grabbed the baby’s legs and screamed and the man ran off.

“Because of the location, the time of day, the two suspects’ similar ages and their similar method of approach, we believe the suspects are working together,” Chaney said.

The man is described as white, 5-foot-4 and 150 pounds. He has brown hair and is bald on top.

The woman has a dark complexion, is also 5-foot-4, 170 pounds, with short “flame-red” hair and an East Coast accent.

Chaney said that patrols in the center have not been increased, but “that the officers who patrol that area are aware of the situation and are spending more time there.”

The Rockledge Assn., the center’s management firm, did not return calls for comment Thursday. Merchants said it does not hire security guards for the center.

Carol London, the owner of a crafts store in the center, said Thursday: “I’m shocked, shocked, shocked. Other than some shoplifting, nothing ever happens here.”

Anyone with information should call the Buena Park police at (714) 562-3964.

Times staff writer Mark I. Pinsky contributed to this story.