HOUSTON – On October 3rd, 1987, the lead story in Houston was the abduction of 14-month-old, Liliana Reyes. She was taken right from her crib in Houston’s East End from inside her home. Chicano Squad member and then rookie Houston Police officer, Jose “Joe” Selvera remembers answering the frantic morning call, “A call came in from Juvenile, they had kidnapping. They were Hispanic and they had no one to work the case,” said Selvera. That’s when the panic-stricken mother told Officer Selvera that her baby girl Liliana had been taken by a homeless woman while they all slept.
Liliana’s parents allowed the homeless woman to stay in their home for one night after she knocked on the door, asking for help. The next morning, Liliana was missing from her crib and the homeless woman was gone. Selvera knew they only had a few hours to find baby Liliana, “When I called the FBI they said they didn’t have anyone who speaks Spanish so they told us to take on the case. That’s when Raymond and I started working the case,” said Selvera.
Selvera and fellow Chicano Squad member, Raymond Gonzales, got a tip. The homeless woman may be headed to the border to cross over into Mexico. They made flyers and passed them around at truck stops, “A truck driver said he recalled having given a ride to a female carrying a baby to the border,” recalled Gonzales.
Then, they got an unexpected call from the mother of the homeless kidnapper. The mother said her daughter was mentally unstable and she had returned home in Puebla, Mexico with a baby that wasn’t hers, “She was very apologetic, speaking Spanish, she was saying that she thinks she has the baby we were looking for,” remembers Selvera, “The worst that was going through my mind when I took the call was that this lady can any minute hang up and we lose everything.”
Selvera needed to confirm that the baby the woman was talking about, was actually baby Liliana Reyes, “There was a birthmark this young lady has that no one knew about. When I asked the mom to describe the little girl, she told me about the birthmark and I knew instantly that we had our girl,” said Selvera.
Now the challenge was how to get Liliana back to Houston from Mexico.
At the time, HPD would not pay for the travel expenses. KPRC 2 worked with the Chicano Squad to help pay for the trip to bring Liliana back to Houston. Twelve days later, Officer Jose Selvera picked up Liliana in Mexico and handed Liliana over to mom, “When I saw them in the news at the airport, I thought, Thank you God, she’s alive,” said Raymond Gonzales. “Thanks to KPRC 2, this young lady is sitting next to us,” said Selvera.
Liliana Reyes is now 38 years old and has children. She says she doesn’t remember the kidnapping at all. She was only 14 months old, but she says she will forever be grateful to the Chicano Squad for saving her life, “It’s like I knew them my whole life. My mom made sure I remembered this for the rest of my life. I don’t talk about it much, my family knows about it and they call me the miracle baby.”
“They mean the world to me,” said Reyes.
