On Christmas Day, 2001, the Metro section of the Washington Post entitled my horrible Christmas Eve as “Children Briefly Abducted In Car Theft”.  I guess in a sense, that’s exactly what happened.  But the brief paragraphs did not capture the anger, fear, and sadness I felt during the three and a half hours that marked the time that my children were missing.  My story is definitely one that goes beyond the headlines.  This is the story you won’t get from the small write up in the Washington Post:

On Monday, December 24, 2001, I was preparing to attend a Christmas celebration at Dominic and Jean’s house in Oxon Hill, Maryland.  The party was to begin at 8:00 p.m., so I was grateful to be up and dressed by 6. My sons, Zion and YahShua (2 years old and 7 months old at the time) were still asleep.  I awakened them, and started getting them dressed for the party.  Time began to slip away from me as 8:00 drew closer, so I began to pick up my pace to get out of the house, and head to Oxon Hill.  As I hurriedly put on Zion’s shoes, my phone rang.  It was Tony, my then boyfriend, and the boys’ father.

“Are y’all ready yet?”

“No. Are you coming to pick us up?”

“No. I still have a customer here at the shop.  You and the boys go ahead, and I’ll meet y’all there.”
“Okay.  See ya later.”  I hung up the phone.  The boys and I were on our way out the front door, when I got another phone call.  I remember hoping that it wasn’t Tony because I was in a hurry.  This time, it was Jean, Dominic’s girlfriend.

“Hey, glad I caught you.”

“What’s up? We’re on our way to your house.”

“No.  Don’t come to our house.  Change of plans. We’re all going over to Jessie’s house.  She wants everyone to spend Christmas Eve at her house.  Dominic called Tony already, and he said he’ll meet us there, okay?”

“I don’t have enough gas to go all the way uptown.  I’ve gotta get some gas, but we’ll be there.”

“Okay, be careful. We’ll see you later.”

“ Bye.”

I really had to rush now.  It was Christmas Eve, everything was closing early, so I wanted to hurry and get to a gas station before closing time.  My mother and I lived together in an apartment in Southeast Washington, D.C. At that time, Jessie lived in Northwest.  As I scrambled to pack YahShua’s diaper bag, Mama finished dressing the boys.

I grabbed my coat, purse, and diaper bag.  Mama had YahShua in her arms and was holding Zion’s hand.  She walked us out to the car (Tony’s 1990 Nissan Maxima), and helped me get the boys buckled in. I put YahShua in the passenger seat because there was no air bag on that side.  Also, he hadn’t had his bottle, and was still asleep.  I had warmed a bottle for him and tucked it inside the car seat with him in case he woke up on the way to Jessie’s.  Mama gave me a hug, and told me to be careful and drive safely.  I told her that I would, I got in the car, and drove off.

I headed down Minnesota Avenue towards the Amoco station on Pennsylvania Avenue.  It looked crowded, but I had less that a ¼ of a tank of gas in the car, so I decided to pull in.

The well lit, crowded gas station was lit even brighter with the Christmas lights that hung all over the poles surrounding the station.  There was a long line to pay for gas, extending out to the pumps.  I was glad to find an unoccupied pump, so I hurried and pulled up to it.  I left the heat on so that the boys could stay warm, turned to the boys, and said, “Mommy will be right back.” I got out of the car, stood at the end of the long line, which was about five feet away from the pump where my car was.  I turned around to face the car and check on the boys and MY CAR WAS GONE!!

I froze in place. I stopped breathing. My children had been kidnapped in a matter of seconds!  I stood there in the freezing cold, without a coat, staring at the van that was now parked at the pump where my car was parked only 30 seconds before.  I thought for a second that perhaps I didn’t park the car there after all.  When the reality that my children were gone struck me, my heart stopped.  All I could do was scream, and scream I did.

“HELP ME! HELP ME!  SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP ME!”

The people who were standing in line ahead of me weren’t paying any attention to me.  The station attendant was inside the booth talking on the phone, and had been taking the customers’ money, but wasn’t authorizing the pumps so that they could pump their gas.  They were really angry with him, so they were all yelling and cursing at him to turn the pumps on.  With all the yelling that they were doing, it was no wonder that no one heard my cries for help.  Finally, after a couple minutes, the man standing directly in front of me turned towards me.  I was still screaming at the top of my lungs.

“What’s the matter, Baby?”

“MY BABIES! HE STOLE MY BABIES!”

“Who stole your babies?”

“I don’t know!  I was parked right here (I pointed to the pump), and I turned around, my car was gone!  My babies are in there! My God! Help me, please!”

The man hugged me and tried to calm me down.  He pushed through the screaming, angry customers in line and made his way to the booth.  He banged on the glass to get the attendant’s attention, who was still talking on the phone.

“Hey, Man!  If you’re not going to turn on the damned pumps so we can get our gas, why don’t you hang up that phone and call 911 now!  This lady’s car was stolen, and her kids are in the car!”

I was shaking all over, but not because I was standing in the cold, December weather without a coat, wearing a short sleeved shirt.  I was scared out of my mind.  I didn’t know what to do.  My children had been kidnapped.  I ran over to the phone booth to call Tony.  I managed to dial his number.  When he answered the phone, I started screaming at him about what happened to the boys.  I was so hysterical, that Tony didn’t recognize my voice, and couldn’t understand what I was trying to say.  I was still screaming into the phone when the man who was in line ahead of me came up to me again.

“Baby, give me the phone.  You can’t talk. You’re too upset. I’ll let them know what happened.  You go into the booth.  He’s got the cops on the phone, and they need to know what your car looks like so they can find your babies.”

I gave him the phone to talk to Tony, and I made my way to the booth to talk to the 911 operator.  The attendant put his arm around me as he handed me the phone, and offered me his chair.  I told the operator what happened, and gave her the tag number of the car.  But because I was so upset, I kept giving the wrong number.  As I was speaking to her, Tony pulled into the gas station. Directly behind Tony, the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department cars began to swarm the station, lights and sirens blaring.  I hung up the phone and went out to speak to the officers.

Tony walked up to me, and I collapsed in his arms, crying uncontrollably.  He held me tightly, rubbing my back.  He was crying, too.

“Tony, I’m gonna die without my babies. You hear me? I’m gonna die!  I want my babies back!”

“No, you’re not.  You’re not gonna die because we’re gonna get them back, tonight.”

Tony had called our families, and soon the gas station was crowded with police, family, and friends holding me, and assuring me that my children would be coming back to me. My father was the first member of my family to arrive at the gas station.  Tony had called and told him and my stepmother, Brenda, what had happened.  Dad was a Deputy U.S. Marshal, so he went over to the police to observe them as they tracked down the boys. We all held hands in a circle, and prayed for my sons’ safe return. After the prayer, two police officers walked over to us.  They’d introduced themselves, but I can’t remember their names now.  I do remember that one of the officers told us that he was a kidnapping expert, and asked me what happened.  I told him everything from the beginning.  Then he asked me for a recent picture of Zion and YahShua.  I started crying again.  Tony took his keys from his pocket, which had keychain with a picture of the boys taken two days prior.  He ripped the keychain off the key ring, handed to the officer, and said through his tears, “Here, Man.  They just took this the day before yesterday.  Just find my boys, please! Find my boys!”

“We’re doing everything we can.  We’ll need this picture to send out to the local TV stations so we can get some help from the public to find your children.”

Another officer asked me if there were any other relatives who lived nearby that he could call for me.  I told him my mother was at home, only blocks away.  I gave him my home number, and he called Mama.  Within minutes she arrived at the station on foot.  She ran over to me and hugged me, asking me what happened.  Soon after, Tony’s family began to arrive at the gas station, all of them hugging me, telling to that the boys were coming home. My chest started to get tight.  I was perspiring heavily, despite the cold weather.  An officer had taken his jacket from his squad car, and given it to me to keep me warm, but I was burning up.  My heart was pounding so heavily, my chest hurt.  An ambulance pulled into the gas station.

One officer suggested that I allow the paramedics to examine me because I appeared to be going into shock.  He escorted me over to the ambulance, and helped me inside.  The paramedics took my blood pressure, and pulse.  Then one of the paramedics said to me,

“Ms. Thompson, we’re going to take you to the hospital so you can be treated for shock.”

“No! I’m not going anywhere until I get my babies back.”

“ You don’t understand. It’s for your own good.  We have to make sure you’re okay.”

“No! You don’t understand.  I came here with my children, and I’m not leaving here without them.”

Both of the paramedics were women, and they were nice and sympathetic to the situation.   They nodded at me, and one held my hand.

“Okay, I understand.  Listen we are both mothers.  Matter of fact, I have two children the same ages as your boys.  So believe me, I understand.”

“We’re going to let you stay out here.  But if you start to feel strange in any way, you just come on back in here, and we’ll take care of you.  God bless you. Don’t worry, they’ll find your babies.  Merry Christmas.”

“Thank you, and Merry Christmas to y’all, too.”  I got out of the ambulance, and went back to join everyone.

After that, time seemed to drag so slowly.  My eyes ached from crying.  I couldn’t stop thinking about my boys.  Did he hurt them?  Did he leave them alone on the side of the road in the freezing cold?  Did he kill them?  All kinds of horrible things ran through my mind.  I could hear Zion’s voice in my head calling, “Mommy?”  I started to cry and shake all over again.  Friends and strangers alike continued to come up to me offering their support and prayers.  My mother and Tony’s mother were huddled up to stay warm and comfort each other.  Dad was still with the police.  My arms ached to hold my babies.  I was afraid, angry, frustrated, helpless, and sad—all at the same time.  I remember asking God what kind of person would do such a thing on Christmas Eve.  I was walking the fine line between sane and insane.

At around ten o’clock p.m., almost three hours after the boys were taken, my father shouted, “Annette! Tony! They’ve found the boys!”  Everyone cheered, cried, thanked God, and jumped up and down.  They were alive!  They weren’t hurt!  They had been abandoned in the car, which had been left in someone’s driveway.  The owners of the home called the police to report that two children had been abandoned in their driveway.  The police informed them of what happened, and asked them to keep the boys until Tony and I could be escorted over to pick them up.

The police drove Tony and me to our children in District Heights, Maryland---barely across the Washington, D.C. line.  When we arrived, there was a news crew outside the house.  We did not talk to them.  We just wanted to hold our sons.  My father had followed us over, and he spoke to the reporters while Tony and I went inside to be reunited with our sons.

When we entered the house, it was warm and cozy.  The smell of turkey filled the air. I walked into the kitchen ahead of Tony, and there was YahShua, sitting on a lady’s lap, sucking his fingers. I ran up to them, grabbed my baby from her lap and said, “Hi, Nibble Nose! Are you okay?  Mommy was so worried about you.” He let out a big burp.  We laughed.  The lady who had been holding him (her name escapes me now) said, “He just ate.  When we took him out of the car, he was screaming his head off.  We thought it was because he wanted his Mommy, but he was just hungry.  You left his bottle in the car seat, so I gave it to him, and we haven’t heard a peep out of him since. We knew you hadn’t gone far because the bottle was still warm.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much.  God bless you.” I took YahShua and walked over to Zion, who was sitting on a sofa next to Tony.  I handed YahShua to Tony, and sat down next to Zion.

“Zion?”  He stared at me as if to say, “Where were you, and what just happened?”

“Zion, it’s Mommy, Baby.”  He jumped in my arms and started crying.  I held him close and cried with him.  We spent the next hour or so thanking the people in the house for helping us, and taking care of the boys for us.  The police were still there fingerprinting the car and asking questions.  I walked around and hugged every one of them and thanked them for bringing my babies back to me.  The police impounded the car that night to search for prints and other evidence.  We got it back a few days later, with the Christmas gifts I’d packed in the trunk still there, untouched.  The thief stole my purse, the car strereo, and the $20 bill I had in the ashtray.  But he didn’t harm the car’s most precious cargo, Zion and YahShua.

I was (and still am) so very grateful to all the people who helped us that night.  I will always be grateful to the officers, paramedics, family, and friends who did everything they could to help us get our children back that night. I am even grateful to the thief (who was never caught).  He made me appreciate the precious gifts who are my children more than ever before.  Most of all, I am grateful to God for sparing the lives of Zion and YahShua.

I was never the same after that night.  I changed in so many ways. The worst part of this experience is that whenever I hear about a child being abducted or missing, I know what the parent is feeling, and I hate that feeling. I always believed Zion and YahShua to be my special gifts from God.  He chose me to be their mother, so I dedicated my life to showing my gratitude to Him by being the best mother I could be.  For years after this incident, I felt that I let God down.  He trusted me to be their mother—to love them, to care for them, and protect them.  But what happened?  They were kidnapped, right in front of me.  It took years for me to forgive myself for being so careless with God’s gifts to me.  I prayed for forgiveness, and I know I’ve been forgiven. Being a mother, in my opinion, is just the greatest honor ever bestowed upon a woman. I never take it for granted.  I honor it, I cherish it, and demonstrate my gratitude by being the best mother I can be.  That’s why I was chosen to be Zion’s and YahShua’s mother.  God created me, and sees something in me that He deems worthy. I learned a few lessons from that night.  As a parent, I am stronger, more focused, more invested, watchful, and most of all, even more grateful to God for my children.