By CW39.com’s Leticia Juarez (KIAH)
A social networking site helped a Houston mother find her lost son more than four years after he went missing.
“A mother-child bond can never be broken,” said Lorena Perez.
Perez has been searching for her son, Isaiah Jeremiah Vaquear since he was just 18-months-old. In 2006, the toddler vanished after Perez’s ex-husband, Joseph Vaquera, took off with him.
“It was hard not knowing if he was hungry or cold or sick, if he was alone somewhere. It was hard,” Perez said.
Since there was no custody order in place Perez could not press charges or have Vaquera arrested. But that changed when Vaquera was arrested for something else.
“In this case, Ms. Perez found that her ex-husband was in jail and she was trying to find out where the child was,” said Donna Hawkins with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.
Perez, who has since re-married, also enlisted the help of her husband.
“Just determination, just being out there doing our own footwork. Being out there doing our own investigation, trying to look for him,” said Victor Vela, Isaiah’s stepfather.
Despite their best effort to locate Isaiah they could not figure out where or with whom he was living with until they logged on to the social networking site – MySpace.
“I found his dad’s new girlfriend on MySpace. So, I had my friend email her,” said
A missing person’s flier of Isaiah was emailed to the woman and within minutes Perez had her phone number. She said to avoid any conflict she turned the number over to the D.A.’s office.
On June 4th, Perez was reunited with her 5-year-old son.
“It’s like he’s not gone, like he was never gone,” said Perez.
Still, Perez knows she has missed out on many of Isaiah’s firsts.
“It’s hard, hurtful because I didn’t get to potty train him, I didn’t take him to his first dentist appointment, but now I get to make new memories,” she said.
She will also be making up for stolen time.
Isaiah’s grandmother, Isabel Vaquera, 54, has been charged with kidnapping and tampering with governmental records due to her unwillingness to return the child when ordered to do so and falsifying the boy’s birth certificate to enroll him in school, said investigators with the Harris County D.A.’s office.
