VENTURA : Sisters Taken Into Protective Custody

Two Ventura sisters who were left alone with a pizza, a carton of eggs and some milk while their parents went on a camping trip were taken into protective custody after a relative claimed they were neglected, police said.

The parents, however, said Ventura County officials had no right to take their daughters--ages 13 and 15--Tuesday night because they had arranged for the girls to stay at a friend’s mobile home in the same Ventura trailer park.

The parents, Richard and Betty Hamblin, said they had given about five bags of groceries to neighbor Ruth Frazee to help her feed their daughters.

Frazee, 36, confirmed the Hamblins’ account Wednesday, displaying their written permission to seek medical treatment for the children, if necessary, during the parents’ four-day trip to the San Luis Obispo area.

Richard Hamblin, 44, a truck driver, said he and his wife left Monday for a camping trip to Avila Hot Springs with another child, an 11-year-old daughter, and said they planned to return this morning. The older girls declined to go because they did not want to miss school, the couple said.

The three campers, awakened late Tuesday in their tent by San Luis Obispo police, packed up and returned home about 1:45 a.m. Wednesday, devastated that their daughters were in a foster home, they said.

“I just want my kids home with me and for everyone to leave me alone,” said Betty Hamblin, 39. “These kids belong with us and nobody else.”

Ventura police, called by Richard Hamblin’s daughter-in-law Tuesday night, searched the two-bedroom trailer on Park Drive and found half of a pizza, a dozen eggs and a third of a quart of milk in the refrigerator, Lt. Brad Talbot said.

But Hamblin said police did not do a thorough search. Wednesday, he pointed to boxes of cereal, potato chips and marshmallows in the kitchen cupboards. In the freezer were two TV dinners. Six had been left behind, he said.

Cecilia Hamblin, the daughter-in-law, said she called police after visiting friends at the trailer park, where she used to live. She said the parents even took the savings of one of the girls to pay for the camping trip, which Richard Hamblin denied. About the only thing she and Hamblin agreed on was that an ongoing family dispute exists involving her husband and her father-in-law.

But she said it was Hamblin’s 13-year-old daughter who requested that she call authorities.