Luckily, Those Kids Had Nosy Neighbors

Somewhere in the psyche of most Americans lie these words: Mind your own business.

That advice has stood Charles and Mindy Jedrey in good stead through their twentysomething lives and had guided them recently, even when highly suspicious things seemed to be going on at their neighbor’s apartment just a few paces away. The key word was seemed. Just because something seems suspicious doesn’t mean you ought to go sticking your nose into it. Pity the fool who gets involved, only to get a tongue-lashing, or worse, for the trouble.

So most people don’t bother. They mind their own business.

Last Monday, the Jedreys decided that whatever was or wasn’t going on across the way was indeed their business.

Thank goodness.

Their good-citizen intervention led Placentia police to a discovery: They say Janet Chen had left her two children, 7 and 4, alone for nearly three weeks while going to North Carolina to rendezvous with a man she met on the Internet. Chen, 31, had left the children with food and, apparently, instructions to hide in the closet if anyone came to the door.

I found myself wondering how the Jedreys weighed the options. At what point do you stick your neck out? Maybe there was an innocent explanation. Who would really believe that a mother would bail on two children so young?

Charles Jedrey, 26, relived those things late Friday night, at the end of a day that began with him getting up at 3:30 a.m. to appear on the “Today” show. Later that day, he and Mindy gave a few minutes to Connie Chung on CNN.

“I don’t take too much mind of other people’s business,” Jedrey says. “Who am I to judge anybody else? That goes along with my belief in Christianity and Jesus Christ. I’m not going to condemn anybody, so I don’t need to mind their business so much.”

The couple, who knew Chen only enough to say “hi” in passing, started getting suspicious on Jan. 3, because by then it had been a week since a post office notice dated Dec. 27 had been attached to her door. No big deal, except during that week Charles and Mindy’s sister both had seen the boy, 4, in the window.

“Where’s that line?” Jedrey asks. “Do you want to make a bad call and alienate your neighbor? That’d be a really uncomfortable thing when you saw them again. And she’s right next door, literally. Our doors are facing each other.”

The Jedreys sat on it. But two days later -- last Sunday night as Santa Ana winds howled and knocked out power in their apartment -- they got increasingly antsy. The next afternoon, Mindy heard the children crying. “We were thinking, it’s been at least nine days now,” Jedrey says. “Why hasn’t that door opened?”

He went over and knocked “loud and long” on Chen’s door. No answer. “Let’s call the police,” he told Mindy. “Worst-case scenario, we were going to look like asses,” he says. “But we knew for a fact the kids were in there and that door had not opened. A lot of time, you start thinking about things and you are overreacting. But all the signs here were clear.”

By week’s end, Chen was in jail, the children in protective custody and the Jedreys in a media spotlight.

“Everyone is calling us heroes,” Jedrey says. “It doesn’t feel like that. We just did what was right.”

On TV, he was described as the children’s “rescuer.” OK, if they insist.

“Honestly, I had a good time with it, because I always thought how cool it would be,” he says of his 15 minutes of fame.

“But right about now, I’m ready for it to be over, you know what I mean?”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com.