Missing Teenager, Family Reunite

SAN DIEGO â€”  A 15-year-old boy missing for more than two years rejoined ecstatic family members Thursday after a social worker in Florida spotted his face on a Web site that posts photographs of missing children.

The boy, who was 12 when reported missing, was met by his tearful mother, brother and several friends at San Diego’s Lindbergh Field after an FBI agent escorted him from Florida. A social worker recognized his face on a Web site run by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, based in Arlington, Va., after he was arrested for trespassing at Walt Disney World, officials said.

“I love you. I love you,� his mother, Mercedes Pringle, said quietly as she embraced the boy before a mob of television cameras.

Few details emerged about the boy’s life since relatives said he ran away from a San Diego group home for troubled and abused children. His mother and brother said the boy was placed in the home after reporting parental abuse, an allegation the mother denied. Pringle, a 45-year-old medical assistant from Chula Vista, said that the family had financial difficulties at the time and that she had been suffering from depression.

Pringle said she got word of scattered sightings but never heard from her son. “I had faith,� she said in an interview. “I knew he was alive.�

FBI officials said he may have been lured across the country by an adult acquaintance of the family with promises of money, clothes, pagers and cellular telephones. No arrests have been made.

“There’s a lot of questions as far as what’s happened, where he’s been for 2 1/2 years, what his experiences have been, what he’s been subjected to,� said FBI Special Agent Darrell Foxworth.

The boy denied being coerced but said little else. Wearing an FBI cap, he said he had been in “different places� and did not attend school.

The case is unusual for the length of time that the boy was missing before being found and returned to his family, said police and missing-children specialists.

“We get daily reports of children who wandered from home, who didn’t come home from school. But in 90% to 95% of the cases, the child is found,� said San Diego police spokesman Bill Robinson. “One where they’ve been found after this amount of time--that’s rare.�

Last year, San Diego police got 3,497 reports of missing children and runaways, nearly 10 a day. No figures were immediately available on how many were found. Often, children are spirited away by a parent during a custody battle.

The center’s Web site, which included biographical data on the boy and a photograph enhanced to suggest what he might look like today, generated tips from throughout the country, officials said.

“We worked so hard on this case trying to find him, thinking he’s in one area, only to find out he’s way the heck in another area,� said Monica Chavez-Perez, a Tustin-based case manager for the missing-children group.