4-Year-Old Home Alone in Laguna Hills Calls 911

By MAI TRAN and DAVID HALDANE

June 14, 2001 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

When Dorothy Lopez, a 911 dispatcher, answered a midmorning call, she heard a plaintive young voice on the line.

“I’m stuck in my house,” the child said.

“You’re stuck in your house?” she asked.

“Yes, and I can’t get out.”

“What is your phone number there?” the dispatcher asked.

“My mommy never told me,” the trembling voice replied.

Thus began an hourlong exchange Tuesday between Lopez, at California Highway Patrol headquarters in Irvine, and a resourceful 4-year-old home alone in Laguna Hills. Thanks to Lopez’s ingenuity in keeping the child on the line, police were able to trace the cell-phone call to the apartment where he had been trapped when the door jammed.

“I tried everything in the world to keep him on the phone, and he kept saying, ‘I’m bored; I’m going to hang up now,’ ” Lopez said Wednesday.

Officer Katrina Lundgren, a spokeswoman for the California Highway Patrol, which responds to 911 calls from cell phones, marveled at the outcome. “It was amazing that a 4-year-old could pick up a phone,” she said.

What led to the situation was still not clear late Wednesday, investigators said.

Apparently, the boy’s 24-year-old mother, whom police did not identify, had gone to Oregon a week earlier, leaving the boy in the care of an aunt. Through an apparent miscommunication, the aunt left on Monday, expecting a baby-sitter to arrive. The baby-sitter told police she thought she wasn’t expected until next week.

Tuesday morning, after visiting a neighbor on his own, the boy was returning to the apartment to get his jacket when the door jammed.

On the 911 tape, which authorities released Wednesday, Lopez asks the boy, “What city do you live in?”

“California,” he replies.

“Who taught you to dial 911?” she asks.

“My mommy,” he says.

The boy did not know his street address but could recite his apartment number, and with gentle coaching from Lopez, he eventually told her his mother’s name. With that information, another dispatcher did a computer search to pinpoint the child’s location. Meanwhile, Lopez kept the boy on the phone with discussions about ice cream, landmarks near his home, ice hockey, dirt bikes and basketball.

“So are the cops going to put me in jail?” he asked at one point.

“Oh, no. You don’t want to go to jail, do you?” Lopez said.

“I was just asking,” he replied.

“You were just asking,” she said, laughing. “They want to come and open the door, though, and let you out.”

That finally happened about 11:20 a.m. as the boy was telling Lopez about a Lakers game he had seen on TV. “I like the ones in purple,” he told Lopez.

Orange County sheriff’s deputies took the youngster and his 15-month-old sister, who apparently was in day care at the time, to Orangewood Children’s Home in Orange, where they were placed in protective custody.

Sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino said investigators want to question all the adults involved.

“They’ve got some hard questions to answer,” he said. “You don’t leave a 4-year-old home alone.”