Pair Give Thanks for Baby’s Return : Kidnaping: Parents spend much of day in prayer at Salvation Army, where worshipers had held a vigil for their child on Friday.

Four-month-old Steffany Zamora and her parents spent Sunday, their first full day together after a weeklong kidnap ordeal, giving thanks for what they described as the “miracle” of their child’s return.

Surrounded by family and friends, Mario and Beatriz Zamora spent much of Sunday worshiping at the Salvation Army’s Santa Ana Temple.

“I thank the Lord for giving me back my daughter,” Beatriz Zamora said in an interview at the church, where worshipers on Friday night had held a three-hour prayer vigil for the baby’s safe return. “I felt in my heart that the world was ending for me when they took my baby away. I came here today because I needed to tell everyone that God is with me.”

The infant disappeared April 22 outside a Sears Roebuck & Co. store at South Coast Plaza, where her aunt and a woman who had recently befriended the family had taken the child have her photographed. When the aunt went to make a phone call, the woman and Steffany disappeared, police have said.

Acting on an anonymous tip, Costa Mesa detectives Saturday flew to Delano, a small agricultural community just north of Bakersfield where, they said, they found the baby unharmed in the home of a migrant farm worker named Maria Louisa Martinez. The parents were flown in a Costa Mesa police helicopter to Delano, where they identified the child and the suspect and were reunited as a family.

Martinez, 36, was being held in Orange County Jail on suspicion of kidnaping and grand theft, the latter in connection with a stolen automobile allegedly found in her possession.

Martinez’s bond was set at $50,000, and she is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday in Municipal Court in Newport Beach.

According to Jerry Gruver, chief of the Delano Police Department, which participated in the arrest, the tip came from a resident who recognized the baby from broadcasts by a Spanish-language television station in the area.

“They put the Costa Mesa flyer on TV in Spanish and one of our citizens called us,” said Gruver, who was present when Martinez was arrested after she allegedly left her home in the stolen car.

“The capture was a breakthrough,” he added. “It’s not every day you can say that you recovered a human being. My officers went to church today and gave thanks to God.”

The Zamoras did just the same in Orange County, spending Sunday morning at a Salvation Army service attended by more than 300 people, some of whom were friends and supporters who had helped search for the missing child.

Mario Zamora, Steffany’s father, said the baby’s safe recovery had renewed his faith in God and would make him a regular churchgoer in years to come. “We’re going to be a real happy family from now on,” he said.

The family took a midday break from the church services to tend to previously planned business that had been postponed when their daughter disappeared: They bought a new set of living room furniture.

And the family’s plans for the future? “We’re going to sit on our new couch and enjoy it,” the mother said.

Times staff writer Len Hall contributed to this report.