Man’s Role in Finding Lost Boys Is Under Investigation : Children: Police are skeptical that recovery of two youngsters by same person is a coincidence. Friends say day laborer had expected to get more cash after being hailed as a hero in the first incident.

As police sought to unravel a day laborer’s involvement in the recovery of two children who were reported missing in the last month, investigators were skeptical Tuesday that the cases were mere coincidence.

Enrique Palma Lopez, 31, called authorities Monday and said he had found 3-year-old Andrew Rodriguez, who had disappeared Christmas Day from a Downtown video arcade. In early December, Lopez found Matthew Vera, 4, who had vanished 40 hours earlier from the Downtown Greyhound bus station.

Police questioned Lopez for 10 hours Monday about the two cases, but he was released because there was not enough evidence to charge him, investigators said.

“Detectives are trying to place either child with Lopez before either call he made to police saying he had found them,” Los Angeles Police Detective Yvette Eggleston said.

A $25,000 reward was offered for information leading to the return of the Rodriguez boy--a reward that Lopez said in a television interview he is entitled to--but Eggleston said Tuesday that no reward will be paid until the police investigation is completed.

Lopez’s friends said Tuesday that they were shocked when they heard that he had come forward with a second child.

“Is it true?” fellow day laborer Javier Contrero said after hearing that Lopez had found the Rodriguez child. “We can’t believe it.”

Contrero said that for the last week he had not seen Lopez at Pico Boulevard and Mullen Avenue, where the men usually wait for work as laborers. Lopez told him, Contrero said, that he had moved in with a San Fernando couple who wrote to him after hearing that he found Matthew wandering alone Downtown on Dec. 6.

Several of Lopez’s friends told The Times two weeks ago that he would sometimes sleep on buses at the Greyhound station, where Matthew disappeared Dec. 4--an assertion Lopez denied. Before Andrew was reunited with his family, he had been seen at the bus station, police said.

After Lopez showed up with Matthew last month, officers helped the homeless man set up a post office box where donations could be sent. Like many other people, several officers believed Lopez was a hero. He had told police that he spent his last few dollars buying a hamburger and milk for the hungry boy.

As one officer put it: “I thought it had to be publicly said that Mr. Lopez did an exceptional thing.”

Once the box was set up, however, Lopez and officers gave conflicting accounts about donations he received. Lopez said he received several letters offering help, but few of those letters offered money, work or a place to live--the three things Lopez wanted most, his friends said.

Although he first told friends he had received no money, he later admitted that several hundred dollars had been sent to the post office box.

Lopez’s friends also said he was especially disappointed when he did not receive more cash from people who wished him well. A former street vendor in Mexico, Lopez had hoped to receive enough money to start a business on the streets of Los Angeles. He suggested that if people did not have money to send him, he would accept merchandise.

At one point, he complained that the relatives of the first child had not done anything to reward him.

“His parents said they would help,” Lopez said.

Friends said Lopez also felt exploited by the media. He has consistently monitored how his story has been played on television and in newspapers, and he carried several reporters’ business cards.

After he was released from custody Monday, he called his own news conference, police said.

In the earlier interview, he repeatedly asked that his post office box number be included in the story and boasted that his story had appeared on the front page of several newspapers and was the lead story on most local broadcasts.

“I really thought I would get a job because of this,” he said. “I got a lot of Christmas cards.”

However, his friends said that it was Lopez who was being used by the media.

“Reporters came to interview him, they talked to him on all the TV channels, police talked to him, and the calls started coming in (offering him jobs and aid),” said Andres Cabrales, a fellow day laborer. “He was in my house. The promises never happened.”