Missing Long Beach Girl Found Unhurt, Kidnap Suspect Held

A 4-year-old Long Beach girl was found unharmed at a Los Angeles apartment complex Thursday evening after her abduction the previous day by a woman who had recently befriended the girl’s mother, and the kidnaper was in custody, authorities said.

Still wearing the same outfit as when she was abducted, Karina Melendez was found about 6 p.m. at the apartment complex in the 3000 block of Leeward Avenue in the Westlake district by a Los Angeles policeman from the department’s Rampart Division.

Police said someone called 911 to report that the girl and her kidnaper could be found at the location, but offered no further details.

“The caller was a citizen who had a hunch that someone they saw at the apartment complex matched the description put out by us and various media reports,” said Darren Lance, a Long Beach police services assistant.

Arrested in the abduction was Maria Sandra Garcia, a 37-year-old woman who had recently befriended the girl’s mother, Delia Bueno, and offered to watch Bueno’s four children Wednesday afternoon while the mother walked to a pay phone and made a call.

Garcia was booked late Thursday into the Long Beach jail on $50,000 bail while Karina was being examined at an undisclosed hospital in Long Beach, authorities said.

Police said the girl would be reunited with her mother at the Long Beach police station after Bueno had been briefed by officers.

The abduction occurred Wednesday after Garcia reportedly offered to watch Bueno’s four children while she briefly left her Long Beach home.

When Bueno returned, her three sons were there but Karina was gone.

Long Beach police had received hundreds of calls regarding the whereabouts of the girl before the 911 caller responded, Lance said.

The case has several haunting similarities to two other kidnapings since March--one in Santa Ana, the other in Pomona--although the three abductions are not related. The two children in the earlier cases were found unharmed.

In all three, the suspects befriended a mother and allegedly kidnaped the children after offering to take care of them. In all three, the parents had more than one child and the suspects were women who were bereft of their own children.

In one case, the suspect had suffered a miscarriage, and in the second the suspect’s baby was stillborn. In this case, according to Bueno, the suspect had said she had a daughter, now 2, whom she had given away at the age of 5 months.

Bueno said she met Garcia in an evangelical Santa Ana church, Soldiers of the Cross of Christ, about three months ago. Both women had lived in apartments connected to the church, police said, and Garcia was still living there until the abduction.

“She never gave me any reason not to trust her,” Bueno said tearfully.

On Tuesday evening, Garcia showed up at Bueno’s home on East Broadway in Long Beach, along with her 22-year-old boyfriend and her son. Garcia said she had no place to stay that night, and Bueno invited her in.

The following day, when Bueno returned from a pay phone, her 7-year-old son told her that Garcia had left with Karina. Garcia’s boyfriend, Francisco Torralvo, had left earlier in the day. Torralvo is now being held by Long Beach police, but has not been arrested or charged with any crime.

The manager of the apartment buildings run by the church said Garcia left her apartment Tuesday without asking permission, which residents of the units are not supposed to do.

In the Pomona kidnaping, police found 5-day-old Alexis Caballero unharmed at the Downey home of his alleged abductor two days after he was stolen in March. The woman charged in the case, Joann Santos, 35, had suffered a miscarriage when she was seven months pregnant, but didn’t tell her family.

After the abduction, Santos allegedly tried to pass the child off as her own. But her husband was suspicious and called police after seeing a news broadcast about the missing boy.

Santos allegedly stole the infant after dropping off the mother, Maria Magana, at an assistance center with her other three children and promising to bring the baby in soon. Instead, Santos fled, police said. Santos pleaded not guilty to one count of kidnaping; her trial is scheduled to begin Aug. 23.

In the Santa Ana case, 4-month-old Steffany Zamora was missing for a week in April after the suspect, Maria Luisa Martinez, offered to take the girl to a department store to have her photograph taken. Martinez, according to police, had convinced Beatriz Zamora, 24, that her infant daughter could be a model.

The girl was found in the farming town of Delano after a neighbor saw a picture of Steffany on a Spanish-language television program and notified police. Martinez told police she had lost her own baby at birth last November and wanted to replace her. Her trial on charges of kidnaping and vehicle theft is scheduled to start July 31, authorities said.

Police believe that this week’s kidnaping is another case in which the suspect was hoping to replace a lost child with someone else’s.

Times staff writer John M. Glionna in Los Angeles and correspondent Jeff Kass in Santa Ana contributed to this story.