Dirtypaws Blog

The day we kidnapped Gracie

23 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment

by dirtpaws in Adoption Wonderfuls, Family Time Tags: accused of kidnapping, adoption, adoption experiences, kidnap

I’m posting this on both of my sites because it’s such an obnoxious story that I had to make sure that it made the rounds to get to everyone.

Yesterday we decided to load up our outdoor play things, scooter, RipStik and football and walk down to Brockwell Park to play. After a while Eric decided to see if there was any Geocaching nearby to go and hunt for. For those who don’t know you use GPS coordinates to find buried or hidden waterproof boxes of small treasures (usually the things are worth less then $1.00) and then you write in the notebook that is left in the box that you found it, who you are and then you take one item and leave one from your stash for the next treasure hunter. It’s a lot of fun, it’s worldwide and they have them everywhere. Even underwater!

Now on to my story: Porter and I decided to stay in the common area and play football and Gracie decided to got with Eric to find the geocache. They were gone for a little while and I finally texted Eric to find out where they were. At the same time he came around the corner to the little pond Porter and I were watching the ducks at and said, “I scared Gracie.” I asked him what happened and he explained that while they were looking for the geocache, she got bored and asked to sit on a bench in the park. Eric told her that he’d be (pointed) over there if she needed him. She said OK and he went on to look for the geocache. Unfortunately, she forgot where he pointed and got scared. She’s a very quiet child so unlike Porter who would be flailing around and screaming for “DADDY!” she sat there quietly and cried. He could see her the whole time but because it looked like she was just sitting there, he didn’t know how upset she had gotten until he came over. Two women were sitting there next to Gracie so when Eric walked up they asked him if he knew where her parents were. To which he replied, “I’m her Father.” To which they responded, “Are you her STEP Father?” “No, I’m her FATHER”, he said and took Gracie by the hand and walked off. We of course reassured Gracie that we would NEVER leave her, that Daddy could see her the whole time and that we would never let anything like that happen again. She hopped on her scooter and we started our long walk back through the park. As we are nearing the long downhill path to the exit, we see a police car come flying through the park THROUGH THE GRASS. I look over at Eric and jokingly go, “Oh look, they are coming to arrest us for kidnapping….”

WHICH THEY WERE!!!!

They squeal up in front of us, blocking our way and hop out. They take one look at our astonished faces and one of the cops goes, “Oh, this is nothing – they are clearly a family.” Apparently they were called out because there was an “abandoned child” left in the park. Which is the polite way of saying, these two ladies thought you kidnapped this child. We explained that Eric could see her the whole time, that he never abandoned her that he was about 50 feet at the most from her but they had to write down our information because a call had been placed.

TWO THINGS.

1) It’s great that people actually look out for one another here. I’m glad that those women took the time to make sure however the fact that they flat out asked Eric if he was her Father and he responded and she was completely compliant when he walked away should have told them that she was our daughter. This is definitely due to the fact that Gracie is Black and we are White. Had we all been the same race, I doubt they would have called the cops on us.

2) The constables were EXTREMELY nice about the whole thing. They were in no way hostile, or condescending. They were very polite and were lovely to talk to. Things could have been a lot worse if they had thought for a second that she wasn’t our daughter as we had nothing on us to prove otherwise.

So that’s how we kidnapped our own daughter…