Missing Teen’s Call Forestalls Offer of Reward

A teenage girl who ran away from a San Diego residential center for troubled youths over the weekend called home Monday just as her parents prepared to offer a $100,000 reward to anyone helping to find her.

Natalie Schneider, 14, called her grandmother in Agoura Hills from a Denny’s restaurant in Pacific Beach, near San Diego, just before the news conference was to take place at 2 p.m., according to her family. She said she wanted to come home, her family said.

The girl had been sent to Vista San Diego Center after she ran away from her Agoura Hills home last month and spent a day with three male Pepperdine University students she met in an Internet chat room, according to her father, Lee Schneider.

Saturday evening the teenager walked away again--that time from the center--accompanied by another 15-year-old resident who Monday morning showed up alone at her mother’s office in San Bernardino.

Natalie Schneider first ran away from her parents’ home Oct. 18, according to the parents, leaving a note saying she was taking a bus across the country.

The following day her parents got a call from the Pepperdine students who said they had seen broadcast reports about the girl’s disappearance and feared they would be arrested. The students brought the girl to a Calabasas shopping center to be reunited with her family and no charges were filed against them.

The Schneiders took Natalie to Vista San Diego Center a few days later.