I Know My First Name Is Steven Read Free

Dennis that he wanted to go to his babysitter's house and that they should get out near The Bottle Shoppe . . . and that was where Dennis had the driver drop them off.
    Sixteen days earlier Timmy had left his half-day kindergarten class at Yokayo Elementary School for the daily walk to his babysitter's house. But he never made it, and his babysitter, Diane Crawford, had waited in vain for her charge, not knowing that Dennis's dad, Ken Parnell, had snatched Timmy from the sidewalk.
    Now, at nine o'clock Saturday night, Dennis and Timmy walked west from State Street to Diane's house on South Avenue, but no one was home. At this point Dennis told Timmy that he would escort him to the Ukiah Police Station, but Timmy refused, saying he knew where he lived and that that was where he wanted to go. The kindergartner pointed Dennis south along South State Street, but when they reached its intersection with freeway U.S. 101 out of San Francisco, Timmy became confused. Even though they were headed in the right direction, the boys were still five miles from Timmy's house.
    But Timmy insisted that Dennis take him home, and so they continued a little farther south along the freeway's shoulder until they reached the Boonville exit, where Dennis became convinced that they were lost and finally talked Timmy into allowing him to take him to the police station. The weary pair turned around and trudged nearly two miles back up South State Street until they reached The Palace Hotel, where they turned down East Standley Street.
    In taking this route, at a little past eleven o'clock that night, Dennis Parnell passed the hotel where his dad was working his first night as the security guard. Dennis had his dad's latest family addition with him, but fortunately, the three of them did not meet, and it would be early the next morning before Dennis would see his dad again . . . and then under very strained circumstances.
    Dennis stopped at the corner of Main and East Standley, where he instructed and encouraged Timmy to continue alone to the Ukiah Police Station just three-fourths of a block away, tell them his name, and, Dennisassured the frightened little boy, the police would see that he got home. Then the fourteen-year-old watched as his little brother slowly made his way to the station's front door, opened it a crack, began to cry, and then let go of the door and ran back to his big brother.
    Inside the station, Officer Bob Warner had seen the little dark-haired boy come to the door, open it, and run away. This was suspicious for that hour of the night, and he went to the door and watched as the child ran up to a much older boy across the parking lot. Fearing that the boys would run away if he approached them on foot, Warner radioed for a patrol unit.
    Within two minutes Officer Russel VanVoorhis pulled his cruiser up beside the two boys, stepped out, and asked the older of the two what the younger boy's name was. Replied Dennis, "Timmy White." Recognizing that as the name of a local five-year-old blond boy who had been missing for over two weeks, a surprised Officer VanVoorhis squatted next to the dark-haired little boy and asked his name again, just to be sure. "Timmy White!" came the crisp reply.
    Two hundred miles south, in Merced, California, as they had for over seven years, Delbert and Kay Stayner went to bed knowing the whereabouts of only four of their five children. In another room of their home, eleven-year-old Cory cried herself to sleep over the long-ago disappearance of her brother, Steven, who would be fourteen now . . . if he was still alive. And, as she had done for most of her life, Cory prayed that Steven was safe and that he would come home soon.
    In Ukiah, Officer VanVoorhis straightened himselfup to address the older boy, but before he could speak, Dennis said, "My name is Steven Stayner, and I've been missing from Merced for seven years."
    Even though he misspelled his name in his initial written report for the Ukiah