US baby found seven years after abduction

Californian detectives are trying to piece together the confused life of a baby girl abducted in 2003 by her aunt from a restaurant - and found, seven years later, 370 miles away in Phoenix, Arizona.

At the centre of their inquiries is a child approaching her eighth birthday who, until last Wednesday, did not even know her real name. She thought she was called Sandra, but her true identity is Amber Nicklas, who as a 13-month-old girl made brief local headlines when she was snatched in her native California seven years ago. She then vanished until late on Wednesday evening.

Acting on a tip-off, police went to an Arizona address where a Romanian-born couple who ran a palm and tarot card-reading business lived. The couple, whom Amber knew as Mom and Dad, tried to hide her, but she was found by officers under a pile of clothes and towels in the shower. She cried when she was told she would have to go with the officials, but eventually calmed down and, clutching her Barney doll, left the white clapboard house. It was the only stable home she had ever known.

Born to a drug-addict mother in 2002, she had been passed to her biological grandmother. Child care officials judged these arrangements unsuitable, and, still not yet a year old, she was placed with foster parents. In late September 2003, Amber went with them, and three of her natural mother's young sisters, on a supervised visit to a Chuck E Cheese restaurant in Norwalk, California. During the meal, two of Amber's aunts distracted the foster parents, giving her 13-year-old aunt, Sabrina Nicklas, the chance to take the child. A police investigation led nowhere. Subsequently, two of the aunts were sent to a juvenile detention centre for their part in the abduction.

How Amber then got to the Arizona couple is not yet known, but officials said the pair were known to at least one member of Amber's natural family. They denied through their lawyer that they had any idea the child had been abducted, and their attorney, John Blischak, told The Arizona Republic newspaper that Amber's grandmother, who is also of Romanian extraction, passed the girl to the pair in 2003, explaining that her mother was a drug addict and unable to care for her. She told them the girl's name was Sandra.

Amber appeared to have been living in the Phoenix home since soon after she was abducted, and was, by all available accounts, happy and well cared for in a house which was clean and tidy. Gustavo Lom, who owns a sandwich and taco shop across the street, said he remembered when Amber was a baby and often saw her and the couple outside together. "I thought they were a normal family. They seemed to treat her as affectionately as any parent treats their kids," Lom said. "I'd see him carrying her in his arms, kissing her on the cheek, sitting on the porch together."

She did not, however, attend school, suggesting the couple knew Amber should be kept concealed from any authorities. But their lawyer said they were, as Romanies, raising the child in what he called a "Gypsy tradition", educating her themselves, and teaching her some Romanian. But even though she is nearly eight, this home schooling had not included reading or writing. The couple insisted they had tried to enrol the girl in school, but lacked the proper paperwork. The couple were also raising a baby girl and had a grown son, both of whom appeared to be their own children.

When police arrived at the home, the purported parents seemed resigned to losing her. "I think they had suspicions we would be coming," the police said. "They weren't asking the types of questions I would expect from true parents. They weren't offering up any resistance." The authorities confirmed Amber's identity by comparing her footprint to that on her birth certificate.

Amber was brought back to Los Angeles on a sheriff's plane. During the flight she played Rock, Paper, Scissors! with the detectives, and had her first sight of Disneyland as they flew over. She will remain in protective custody while the authorities investigate what role, if any, the Phoenix couple had in her abduction. Meanwhile, the Arizona couple's lawyer said they hoped to regain custody of Amber. The woman whom Amber knew as her mother, Shirley Frank, was tearful and visibly upset at losing Amber when she was interviewed on US television three days ago.

Some commentators have said Amber's case offers grounds for optimism in the cases of other long-term missing children such as Madeleine McCann. If nothing else, it suggests there are people - perhaps otherwise respectable people - whose desire for a child to raise as their own is such that they are not inclined to ask too many questions about where he or she has come from. But, for all its illegality, Amber's Arizona home seems to have been a better, more loving place than the one she was born in.

- INDEPENDENT