Runaway Boys Found After a Long Walk

A pair of homesick young brothers turned up at a relative’s house in Fullerton on Tuesday, ending a 15-hour search for them as they walked from Long Beach to their old neighborhood.

“They walked from Long Beach to Fullerton,” said David Marander, a spokesman for the Long Beach Police Dept. “The boys are fine.”

The brothers--Roberto Marquez, 12, and Daniel Marquez, 10--had left their home in Long Beach sometime before 5 a.m. after leaving a note for their parents saying they were returning to the Orange County neighborhood from which they had moved just 10 days earlier, about 20 miles away.

“It’s amazing that they had the willpower to walk the entire distance,” Marander said. “I’m sure this is something that will stick with them for the rest of their lives.”

The two had last been seen by their parents about midnight Monday asleep in their beds, authorities said. At 5 a.m. Tuesday, their father awoke to find them missing from the apartment in the 1600 block of Sherman Place in Long Beach.

Police dogs were able to follow the runaways’ trail as far as Cal State Long Beach, several miles east of where they started, but then lost the scent.

Fullerton police were alerted about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday when the exhausted boys arrived at the home of relatives in Fullerton. “The parents were happy that they were OK and just wanted to get them home,” Marander said.