Girl Kidnapped by Dad Reunited With Mother

“The nightmare is over.”

That’s how the mother of a kidnapped 2-year-old is feeling now that her daughter has been returned after being abducted by the baby’s father almost two years ago.

On Friday, Theresa Pallido, 39, of Ventura was reunited with her daughter, Stephanie Quiroz, in Sayula, Jalisco, Mexico, where Stephanie had been living under the name of Alejandra Monique with her father, Ismael Quiroz, since he abducted her from Pallido’s home on Sept. 27, 1994.

The reunion was made possible by Advo Inc., a direct-mail company headquartered in Windsor, Conn., that put out a picture of Stephanie on its familiar nationwide “Have You Seen Me?” cards, and a TV station in Mexico whose broadcast reenactment of Stephanie’s abduction was seen across Mexico and in parts of the United States.

Mother and daughter arrived at Los Angeles International Airport aboard an American Airlines flight from Mexico at 4:15 p.m. Friday to a crush of media and family members, including Pallido’s 19-year-old son, Anthony.

In a telephone interview, Pallido sounded more than happy to once again hold her daughter, who will turn 3 on Aug. 23. “I’m feeling great,” Pallido said. “The nightmare is over and now it’s time to go on.”

The separation began one morning around 4 when Pallido, a shipping stock coordinator at Procter & Gamble in Oxnard, was getting ready for work.

“There was a knock at the door and it was [Ismael Quiroz],” Pallido said. “We had been apart for about six months.” The couple was never married, she said.

Quiroz said he wanted to take his daughter to LAX to meet his mother, who had flown in to go to the funeral of a sister. “Turns out the sister was dead for 10 years,” Pallido said.

After she refused Quiroz’s request, Pallido said he left.

He returned after Pallido went to work and took the girl as a baby-sitter slept in another room, authorities said.

As well as having grown quite a bit since her abduction, Stephanie looked great, her mother said. “She was so pretty. She didn’t come to me right away, but it was a great feeling just to be with her,” Pallido said.

Stephanie speaks no English, but communication with her mother has not been a problem. When Pallido put a favorite Mickey Mouse doll in Stephanie’s hands, the girl’s face lit up: “Mickey!” she said.

Mexican authorities were extremely helpful in locating and arranging for the recovery of the kidnapped girl, Grossman said. However, the kidnapping of a child by its father is not a crime for which Mexico will extradite suspects, she said.