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Missing tot
turns up under a
bed at home
Anguish turns into elation
By Jaymes K. Song
when the little girl is found
Star-BulletinA lost Angel was found in Waimanalo today.
But only after a massive effort by a whole community and police.
Angel Kamakea, 2, gave her parents a scare when her mother, Pamela Kaleikini, woke up at about 6 this morning and couldn't find the little girl.
"It was just fear ... fear that someone took her and fear that she was hurt," Kaleikini said. "She usually sleeps in my bed, but last night she slept on a mattress on the ground with her brother."
Kaleikini searched their house and then called police.
"I don't know if I should cry. I don't know if I should be angry," said a worried Ryan Kamakea, as neighbors in the tight-knit community on Ala Koa Street helped pass out fliers bearing Angel's photograph. "All I know is I love my daughter."
For more than three hours, the frantic search continued with a police helicopter circling over the neighborhood. Then the distraught mother heard something underneath Kaleikini's brother's bed.She quickly flipped over the mattress and discovered her crying daughter at 9:24 a.m.
"I heard crying and there she was," said a sobbing Kaleikini as she hugged her shaken but uninjured daughter.
Missing persons detective Joseph Self said he had experienced a similar case before.
He added that Angel's parents looked under the bed but didn't see her and they did the proper thing by calling 911 immediately.
But he advised parents to watch their children carefully. "It's a good feeling, that's two in one week," Self said, referring to 2-year-old Krystal Mines, who was found Monday in Chinatown after being missing for two days.
Meanwhile in Waimanalo, the tears of fear turned into happiness at Angel's house. "God has been good," Kamakea said.
Angel, wearing diapers and a T-shirt, held on tightly to her father and just smiled.
