I Lost My Son at 7. The Night He Walked Back In, He Saved Another

December 4, 1972 — The Day My World Stopped

The Afternoon That Changed Everything

I was folding laundry when the school bus pulled up that Tuesday afternoon.

It was December 4th, 1972, and the winter sun was already starting to dip low over our Merced, California neighborhood. I remember thinking how peaceful everything felt—the clean smell of detergent on warm towels, the sound of my other children playing in the next room, the simple rhythm of ordinary life.

I had four beautiful children then. Cary was eleven, the serious one, always watching everything with those thoughtful eyes. Cory and Delbert were younger, full of energy and mischief. And then there was Steven—my seven-year-old bundle of joy with the brightest smile you’d ever seen.

Steven was the kind of child who made you grateful to be a mother. He’d wake up singing, fall asleep mid-sentence telling you about his day, and somehow manage to find wonder in everything from a caterpillar on the sidewalk to the way raindrops raced down windows.

That afternoon, like every afternoon, I expected to hear the front door bang open and Steven’s voice calling out, “Mom! I’m home!” He always said it the same way—excited, like he’d been on some grand adventure and couldn’t wait to tell me about it.

But that Tuesday, the door never opened.

At first, I wasn’t worried. Maybe he’d stopped to play with a friend. Maybe he’d gone to look at something interesting on the walk home. Steven was a curious child, easily distracted by the world around him.

But as the minutes ticked by—ten, then twenty, then thirty—a cold feeling started creeping into my chest.

“Cary,” I called to my oldest, trying to keep my voice steady. “Did you see Steven get off the bus?”

“No, Mom. I thought he was walking home with someone.”

By four o’clock, I was standing on our front porch, scanning the street in both directions. By four-thirty, my husband Delbert and I were in the car, driving Steven’s route home from school. By five o’clock, we were calling every parent we knew.

And by six o’clock, when the sun had set completely and our little boy still wasn’t home, I was calling the police with shaking hands.

“My son is missing,” I said, and hearing those words come out of my own mouth made them real in a way that terrified me. “His name is Steven Stayner. He’s seven years old. He never came home from school.”

The Search That Consumed Us

The police came quickly, I’ll give them that. Within an hour, our small house was full of officers asking questions, taking notes, studying Steven’s school picture.

“Has he ever run away before?”

“No, never.”

“Any family troubles? Arguments at home?”

“No, nothing like that. Steven was happy. Is happy.” I caught myself using past tense and felt sick.

“Any custody disputes? Anyone who might want to take him?”

I shook my head, tears starting to blur my vision. “Please. He’s seven years old. He wouldn’t just wander off. Someone took my baby.”

They searched through the night. Neighbors joined in, walking the streets with flashlights, calling Steven’s name into the darkness. “Steven! Steven, honey, if you can hear us, come home!”

I stood on our front porch wrapped in a blanket, watching all those flashlight beams crisscross through the neighborhood like fallen stars, and I prayed harder than I’d ever prayed in my life.

“Please, God. Please bring my boy home. Please keep him safe. Please let this be a mistake, a misunderstanding. Please let him walk through that door any minute now.”

But he didn’t.

By dawn, I’d been awake for twenty-four hours straight. The police had found nothing—no witnesses, no clues, no sign of where my seven-year-old son had gone.

It was like he’d simply vanished into thin air.

The First Week: When Hope Starts to Crack

The first week was a blur of police interviews, search parties, and phone calls that never brought good news.

We learned that a man named Ervin Murphy had been seen talking to children near the school, handing out religious pamphlets. Several kids remembered him. One even remembered Steven talking to him.

“He was asking about donations,” one little girl told the police. “He asked if Steven’s mom would donate to the church.”

The police tracked down Murphy quickly. He confessed within hours—said a man named Kenneth Parnell had convinced him to help kidnap a boy. Said Parnell told him it was for some kind of “religious program,” that the boy’s parents couldn’t take care of him anymore.

Murphy told them everything, except the one thing we needed most: where Steven was.

By the time the police got to Parnell’s cabin in Catheys Valley, it was empty. They’d moved on, taking my son with them.

I remember the officer’s face when he came to tell us. He looked exhausted, defeated.

“We know who has him,” he said. “Kenneth Parnell, a convicted sex offender from 1951. But Mrs. Stayner, I have to be honest with you—they could be anywhere by now. California is a big state.”

A sex offender.

Those words hit me like a physical blow. My seven-year-old baby boy was with a sex offender, and there was nothing—nothing—I could do to protect him.

That night, after the officer left, I went into Steven’s room and sat on his bed. His stuffed animals were lined up on his pillow, exactly where he’d left them that morning. His jacket was hanging on the back of his door. His shoes were scattered on the floor.

Everything was there except Steven.

I picked up his pillow and held it against my chest, breathing in the little-boy smell of him—strawberry shampoo and playground dust and something uniquely Steven—and I sobbed until I thought my heart would break in half.

The Months That Became Years

People always ask what it’s like to have a missing child. They want to understand the grief, the fear, the endless not-knowing.

The truth is, it’s like living in two worlds at once.

In one world, you have to keep living. You have to feed your other children, do the laundry, go to the grocery store. You have to pay bills and attend parent-teacher conferences and pretend that life goes on.

In the other world—the real world, the one that matters—your child is out there somewhere, maybe hurt, maybe scared, maybe calling for you, and you can’t reach them. You can’t protect them. You can’t do the one thing a mother is supposed to do: keep her baby safe.

Every single day for seven years, I woke up thinking about Steven. Where was he? Was he cold? Was he hungry? Did he remember us? Did he think we’d abandoned him?

Birthdays were the worst. That first year, December 18th, 1973, would have been Steven’s eighth birthday. I baked a cake anyway. I put eight candles on it. We sang “Happy Birthday” to an empty chair at the dinner table, and then I cut a slice and left it on the kitchen counter all night, like somehow Steven would know we were thinking of him.

I did that every year. Eight candles, then nine, then ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen.

Seven birthday cakes for a child who wasn’t there to eat them.

Christmas was agony. Every year, I’d buy presents for Steven—clothes in whatever size I guessed he’d be, toys I thought he might like—and I’d wrap them and put them under the tree. On Christmas morning, we’d open everyone else’s gifts, and then we’d leave Steven’s under the tree, unopened.

Our living room closet filled up with seven years’ worth of unopened Christmas presents.

Sometimes I’d catch myself listening for him. I’d be doing dishes or folding laundry, and I’d hear a child’s voice outside and think, “That’s Steven!” My heart would leap into my throat, and I’d run to the window, only to see some other child—some other mother’s son—playing in the street.

The disappointment never got easier.

The Shame Nobody Talks About

There’s something nobody tells you about having a missing child: people start to look at you differently.

At first, everyone was supportive. The community rallied around us, organized search parties, held fundraisers. But as the months turned into years and Steven didn’t come home, I could feel the shift.

Some people wondered if maybe we’d done something wrong. If maybe Steven had run away for a reason. If maybe we weren’t telling the whole truth.

Others—and this was almost worse—simply stopped talking about him at all. They’d see me at the grocery store and suddenly remember they had somewhere else to be. They’d change the subject when I mentioned Steven’s name. They wanted to move on, to forget, to stop being reminded that terrible things happen to innocent children.

But I couldn’t move on. I couldn’t forget. Steven was my son, and even if the rest of the world had given up on him, I never would.

Every night before bed, I’d go to his room and sit in the dark. Sometimes I’d talk to him, like he could somehow hear me across whatever distance separated us.

“Steven, honey, if you can hear me, I want you to know we’re still looking for you. We’ve never stopped looking. Please, baby, please find a way to come home. I love you so much. We all love you so much.”

The room never answered back. But I kept talking anyway, because what else could I do?

The Day the Phone Rang

March 2nd, 1980.

It started like any other Monday morning—which is to say, it started with heartbreak. Seven years, two months, and twenty-eight days since Steven had disappeared.

I’d stopped counting after the first few years. The numbers were too heavy to carry.

I was making breakfast when the phone rang. It was early—not quite 8 a.m.—and my first thought was annoyance. Who calls this early on a Monday?

“Mrs. Stayner?” The voice on the other end was a police officer from Ukiah, a small town about 170 miles north of us.

My stomach dropped. Police calls never brought good news.

“Yes?”

“Mrs. Stayner, I need you to sit down.”

Oh God. They’d found a body. After seven years, they’d finally found my son’s body, and I was about to hear the words no parent should ever have to hear.

“Mrs. Stayner, I think we have your son.”

Time stopped.

“What?”

“Steven Stayner. He walked into our police station last night with a five-year-old boy. He said… he said his name is Steven Stayner, and he wants to go home.”

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. The room was spinning, and I was gripping the kitchen counter so hard my knuckles had gone white.

“Is it really him?” I whispered. “Are you sure?”

“We’re sure, ma’am. He’s been asking for you all night. Would you and your husband be able to come to Ukiah?”

March 2, 1980 — The Drive to Get My Son Back

The Longest 170 Miles of My Life

My husband Delbert and I made that drive to Ukiah in a daze.

One hundred and seventy miles. Under normal circumstances, it would take about three hours. But nothing about that morning was normal, and I swear it felt like the longest journey of my entire life.

I couldn’t stop shaking. My hands trembled so badly that Delbert had to drive while I sat in the passenger seat, staring out the window without really seeing anything. My mind was racing through seven years’ worth of questions all at once.

Was it really Steven? What if it was a mistake? What if someone was playing a cruel joke? But what if it was him? What would he look like now? Would he remember us? Would he remember me?

He’d been seven years old when they took him—just a little boy with scraped knees and a gap-toothed smile. Now he was fourteen. A teenager. Seven years. Half his lifetime.

“What do I say to him?” I whispered to Delbert. “What do you say to your child after seven years?”

Delbert reached over and squeezed my hand. He didn’t have an answer either.

We’d been driving for what felt like an eternity when I suddenly thought about the birthday cakes. Seven years of birthday cakes, sitting unopened in our closet. Seven Christmases worth of presents, still wrapped.

“We should have brought something,” I said suddenly. “A present. Something to show him we never forgot.”

“Kay,” Delbert said gently, “we’re enough. We’re what he needs.”

I wanted to believe that. God, I wanted to believe that.

“I Know My First Name Is Steven”

The Ukiah Police Department was a small building, nothing fancy. But when we pulled into the parking lot, my heart was pounding so hard I thought it might burst right through my chest.

A police officer met us at the door. He was kind, professional, but I could see the emotion in his eyes too.

“Mrs. Stayner, Mr. Stayner, before you see Steven, I need to prepare you for a few things.”

I nodded, though I wasn’t sure I could handle any more information. My entire body felt like it was vibrating with nervous energy.

“Steven walked into this station last night around 9 p.m. with a five-year-old boy named Timothy White. Timothy had been kidnapped two weeks ago from right here in Ukiah. Steven—your son—he rescued that little boy and brought him to safety.”

My legs nearly gave out. Delbert caught my arm to steady me.

“Steven’s been living under the name Dennis Parnell for the past seven years,” the officer continued. “The man who took him, Kenneth Parnell, told Steven that you couldn’t afford to keep him anymore, that you’d given him up. Steven believed that for a long time.”

Tears were streaming down my face now. My baby. My baby boy thought we’d abandoned him.

“But when we asked him who he was,” the officer said, and I could hear his voice getting thick with emotion, “he looked us straight in the eye and said, ‘I know my first name is Steven.’”

Those seven words—”I know my first name is Steven”—became the most beautiful sentence I’d ever heard in my life.

“He’s waiting for you,” the officer said quietly. “Are you ready?”

No. I wasn’t ready. How could anyone be ready for this moment?

But I nodded anyway.

The Reunion

The officer led us down a hallway to a small room. Through the window in the door, I could see a teenage boy sitting at a table. He was thin—too thin—with shaggy hair and clothes that didn’t quite fit right. His shoulders were hunched, and he was staring down at his hands.

And even though seven years had passed, even though he was almost twice the size of the little boy I’d lost, I knew him. God, I knew him.

“Steven,” I whispered.

The officer opened the door, and the boy’s head snapped up.

For a moment, we just stared at each other. Seven years of distance, seven years of pain, seven years of wondering if this moment would ever come—it all hung in the air between us.

Then Steven stood up, and his voice cracked as he said one word: “Mom?”

I was across that room in two seconds flat, pulling him into my arms, holding him so tight I was afraid I might hurt him but unable to let go. He was so tall now, almost as tall as me, but he felt fragile in my arms, like something that had been broken and badly repaired.

“I’m here, baby,” I sobbed into his shoulder. “I’m here. We never stopped looking for you. We never gave up. Not for one single day.”

Steven’s whole body was shaking. He held onto me like I was the only solid thing in a world that was spinning out of control.

“I thought—” his voice was hoarse, choked with tears. “He said you didn’t want me anymore. He said you couldn’t afford me. I thought—”

“No,” I said fiercely, pulling back just enough to look him in the face. “No, Steven. That was a lie. Everything he told you was a lie. We wanted you. We’ve always wanted you. You’re our son. You’re ours.”

Behind me, Delbert was crying too. Our other children—Cary, Cory, and Delbert Jr.—would meet him later. But in that moment, it was just the three of us, trying to put together the pieces of a family that had been shattered seven years ago.

The Story No Mother Should Ever Have to Hear

Over the next few hours, in that sterile police station room, we started to learn what had happened to our son.

The details came out slowly, painfully. Steven would say something, then stop, then start again. Sometimes he’d look away, unable to meet our eyes.

On December 4, 1972, a man named Ervin Murphy had approached Steven after school, handing out religious pamphlets. Murphy asked if Steven’s mother would be willing to donate to the church. Steven, always helpful, always kind, agreed to help.

Murphy led him to a car where Kenneth Parnell was waiting. They told Steven they just needed to talk to his mom real quick. But instead of driving to our house, they drove to a cabin in Catheys Valley.

What I learned later—what still haunts me to this day—is that cabin was only a few hundred feet from Steven’s maternal grandfather’s house. My son was that close to family, and we had no idea.

That first night, Parnell told Steven that he’d talked to his parents. That we’d said it was okay for Steven to spend the night. Steven believed him. Why wouldn’t he? He was seven years old.

The next morning, Parnell sexually assaulted my son for the first time.

I had to leave the room when they told me that. I stumbled into the hallway and vomited in a trash can while Delbert held my hair back. Seven years. Seven years of that monster hurting my baby, and there was nothing I could do to change it, nothing I could do to take that pain away.

When I came back into the room, shaking and pale, Steven looked at me with such guilt in his eyes.

“Mom, I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get away.”

That broke me. My fourteen-year-old son, who’d endured horrors no child should ever face, was apologizing to me.

“No,” I said, kneeling in front of his chair and taking his hands. “No, Steven. You have nothing to be sorry for. Nothing. This wasn’t your fault. None of this was your fault.”

But I could see in his eyes that he didn’t believe me. Not yet.

Seven Years as “Dennis Parnell”

Parnell had enrolled Steven in school under the name Dennis Parnell, claiming to be his father. They moved frequently—different towns, different schools, different apartments—always staying just ahead of suspicion.

The cruelest part? We’d sent flyers with Steven’s picture to schools all over the district. Some of the schools Steven actually attended received those flyers. But no one ever recognized him.

Parnell controlled Steven through a devastating combination of abuse and manipulation. He would beat him, assault him, terrorize him. And then he’d buy him gifts, take him to movies, give him “freedom” to go to school and make friends.

He told Steven over and over again that we didn’t want him. That we couldn’t afford to keep him. That we’d given Parnell legal custody. That his new name was Dennis, and Steven Stayner didn’t exist anymore.

For years, Steven believed it. What choice did a seven-year-old have?

But as he got older, doubts started creeping in. He’d watch the news, scan newspapers, looking for any sign that someone was searching for him. Looking for proof that the life he remembered—the life with us—had been real and not just a dream.

“I’d ask myself, ‘Mom and Dad, where the hell are you?’” Steven told us, his voice breaking. “And when I didn’t see anything, it just made me believe what he’d said. That you really didn’t want me.”

I held him while he said this, and I cried for all the years he’d spent believing that lie.

The Boy Who Saved Another

In February 1980, when Steven was fourteen, Parnell came home with a new victim.

Timothy White was five years old—the same age Steven had been when Parnell first started grooming him. Parnell had enlisted a local teenager named Sean Poorman to help kidnap Timothy from the streets of Ukiah. The little boy was walking home from school, just like Steven had been.

Steven watched as Timothy cried for his parents. Watched as Parnell tried to convince the terrified five-year-old that his name was now “Tommy.” Watched as Parnell dyed Timothy’s blonde hair dark brown to hide his appearance.

And Steven made a decision.

“I wasn’t going to let that child go through what I had already been through,” Steven told the police. “And if I didn’t take care of it now, it would just get worse.”

For two weeks, Steven took care of Timothy. He comforted him when he cried. He told him stories. He promised him that everything would be okay.

And then, on March 1, 1980, while Parnell was at his night security job, Steven made his move.

He woke Timothy up quietly. “We’re going home,” he told the little boy. “I’m taking you home to your mommy and daddy.”

They hitchhiked into Ukiah—a fourteen-year-old boy and a five-year-old child, in the middle of the night. When they got to town, Timothy couldn’t remember his address. He was too young, too scared, too confused.

So Steven did the bravest thing imaginable. He walked into the Ukiah Police Department and told them the truth.

“My name is Steven Stayner,” he said. “I was kidnapped seven years ago. And this is Timothy White. He was kidnapped two weeks ago. I need you to take him home.”

My son—my brave, beautiful son—had saved that little boy. He’d risked everything to make sure Timothy didn’t suffer the way he had.

The Media Storm

Within twenty-four hours of Steven walking into that police station, the story was national news.

“KIDNAPPED BOY RETURNS AFTER 7 YEARS”
“TEEN HERO RESCUES KIDNAPPING VICTIM”
“MIRACLE IN MERCED: MISSING CHILD COMES HOME”

The press descended on us like locusts. They camped outside our house, followed us to the grocery store, shouted questions at Steven whenever he left the house.

Three days after Steven came home, we were on Good Morning America. The host, David Hartman, asked Steven how it felt to be home.

“Great,” Steven said quietly, but I could see the exhaustion in his eyes, the way he hunched his shoulders like he was trying to make himself smaller.

“Do your parents look different?” Hartman asked.

Steven glanced at Delbert and me. “They didn’t change that much,” he said. “But my brother and sisters, they changed a lot. I never recognized either one of them.”

That was the moment I realized just how much we’d all lost. Seven years hadn’t just stolen Steven’s childhood—it had stolen his place in our family. His siblings were strangers now. The house he remembered was different. The world had moved on without him, and now he had to figure out how to fit into a life that no longer quite matched his memories.

Coming Home Isn’t the End

People thought the hard part was over. Steven was home. The bad guy was caught. We could all live happily ever after, right?

But it wasn’t that simple. It’s never that simple.

Steven didn’t know how to be a teenager in 1980. For seven years, he’d lived under Parnell’s rules—arbitrary, cruel, constantly shifting. Now he was expected to follow our rules, and they didn’t make sense to him.

Curfews. Chores. Homework. Normal teenage responsibilities felt like prison to a boy who’d spent seven years being controlled by a monster.

His relationship with Cary, his older brother, was especially difficult. Cary had gone from being the protective older brother to living in the shadow of Steven’s celebrity. Everywhere they went, people wanted to talk to Steven, the miracle boy who’d come home. Nobody asked about Cary.

They shared a bedroom, but they might as well have been strangers.

Steven struggled in school. He’d missed so much education during those seven years. He was supposed to be a freshman in high school, but he was reading at a sixth-grade level.

And the nightmares—God, the nightmares. I’d hear him screaming in the middle of the night, and I’d run to his room to find him sitting up in bed, drenched in sweat, shaking.

“It’s okay, baby,” I’d whisper, holding him like I’d held him when he was small. “You’re safe now. You’re home.”

But was he? Was he really home? Or had seven years with Kenneth Parnell created scars so deep that “home” was just another word that didn’t mean anything anymore?

The Trial

In 1981, Kenneth Parnell went on trial for kidnapping Steven and Timothy.

Steven had to testify. Had to sit in that courtroom and relive every horrible detail while Parnell sat there, cold and impassive.

Parnell’s defense attorney argued that Steven could have left at any time but chose not to. That he wasn’t really a kidnapping victim at all.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to jump out of my seat and shake that lawyer until he understood what they’d done to my son. Seven years old. Steven had been seven years old when they stole him. How dare they suggest it was his choice?

The prosecutor argued that Steven was a psychological prisoner, that the kidnapping was a continuous event for all seven years.

A psychologist testified about the brainwashing, the manipulation, the way Parnell had systematically destroyed Steven’s sense of self and replaced it with “Dennis Parnell.”

In the end, Parnell was convicted of kidnapping both Steven and Timothy. He was sentenced to seven years in prison—one year for each year he’d stolen from my son’s childhood.

Seven years. That’s all they gave him. He’d be eligible for parole in five.

It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. But it was all we were going to get.

September 16, 1989 — When Heaven Gave Him Back, Then Took Him Again

Learning to Live Again

The years after Steven came home weren’t easy. I won’t pretend they were.

People expected a fairy tale ending—boy comes home, family reunites, everyone lives happily ever after. But real life isn’t a fairy tale, and trauma doesn’t disappear just because you want it to.

Steven struggled with everything. School was overwhelming—he was supposed to be a high school sophomore, but he’d missed so much education that he could barely keep up. The other kids didn’t know how to treat him. He was famous, but he was also different, damaged in ways they couldn’t understand.

He went to therapy, but talking about what happened to him was like reopening wounds that had never really healed. Some nights I’d hear him crying in his room, and I’d stand outside his door, my hand on the doorknob, torn between wanting to comfort him and knowing he needed space to process his pain alone.

His relationship with his siblings was complicated. Cary, especially, seemed to resent the attention Steven got. Cary had been through his own trauma—losing his brother at eleven, growing up in the shadow of Steven’s disappearance, then suddenly being invisible when Steven came home. The local news interviewed Steven constantly. Strangers stopped him on the street. Everyone wanted to know about the kidnapping, the rescue, the hero.

Nobody asked about Cary.

But there were good moments too. Beautiful moments that made my heart ache with gratitude.

I remember the first time Steven helped me make dinner after he came home. We were making spaghetti—his favorite as a little boy—and he stood at the counter chopping vegetables while I stirred the sauce. We didn’t talk much, just worked side by side, and for a few precious minutes, it felt almost normal. Like we’d never lost those seven years.

He started working odd jobs—security guard, delivery driver, meat-packing plant. The work was hard and the pay was minimum wage, but Steven was determined to make his own way, to prove he could be normal, functional, independent.

And then he met Jody.

Finding Love

Jody Edmondson was seventeen years old when she met Steven at the meat-packing plant where he worked. She was young, maybe too young, but she saw something in Steven that others missed.

She didn’t see the famous kidnapping victim. She didn’t see the damaged boy who’d endured seven years of hell. She saw Steven—funny, kind, protective, trying so hard to build a normal life.

They dated for a year, and in 1985, when Steven was twenty and Jody was just seventeen, they got married.

I worried. Of course I worried. They were so young, and Steven was still healing from wounds that might never fully close. But when I saw the way he looked at her—like she was the one good, pure thing in a world that had been cruel to him for so long—I understood.

Jody gave Steven something he desperately needed: a future.

They moved into a small place together, working multiple jobs between them to make ends meet. They argued sometimes—over money, over how to slice pickles for hamburgers, over all the tiny frustrations of two young people trying to build a life together. But they loved each other fiercely.

And then, in 1986, they had a baby girl. Ashley.

I’ll never forget the first time Steven held his daughter. He stood in that hospital room with Ashley cradled in his arms, and tears were streaming down his face.

“Mom,” he whispered, “I’m a dad.”

“Yes, you are, sweetheart.”

“I’m going to protect her,” he said fiercely. “Nobody is ever going to hurt her the way I was hurt. I promise.”

And he meant it.

The Father Who Watched Over Everything

Two years after Ashley was born, Steven and Jody had a son. Steven Jr..

Watching Steven with his children was both beautiful and heartbreaking.

He was the most protective father I’ve ever seen. His kids didn’t go anywhere without him. If they were playing on the porch, Steven had the door open so he could see them and hear their voices at all times.

“As long as I can see them and hear their voices, I’m OK,” he told a reporter in 1989.

He never let them out of his sight. Never. Because he knew—God, he knew—what monsters lurked in the world, waiting to snatch innocent children.

When Ashley started school, Steven walked her there every single day and picked her up every single afternoon. Other parents thought he was overprotective, maybe even paranoid. But I understood. How could I not?

Steven also started working with organizations that searched for missing children. He gave talks at schools, warning kids about stranger danger, teaching them that it’s okay to scream, to run, to fight if someone tries to take them.

“Don’t trust adults who ask you for help,” he’d tell them. “Adults should ask other adults for help, not children. If someone tries to get you in their car, scream as loud as you can. Make noise. Fight back.”

He was trying to make sure what happened to him never happened to anyone else.

The Movie That Told His Story

In May 1989, NBC aired a miniseries called “I Know My First Name Is Steven”.

Steven worked as a consultant on the film, helping the writers and actors understand what those seven years had been like. Watching them recreate his nightmare was difficult—excruciating, even—but Steven wanted the story told accurately.

“If this can help even one kid stay safe,” he said, “it’s worth it.”

The miniseries was watched by 40 million people. Suddenly, Steven’s story was national news all over again. Reporters called constantly. Strangers recognized him on the street.

But Steven didn’t want fame. He just wanted to be a good father, a good husband, a normal person living a normal life.

He was twenty-four years old. He had a wife who loved him and two beautiful children who needed him. For the first time since he was seven years old, Steven’s life was finally, finally starting to work.

And then, on September 16, 1989, God took him away from me again.

The Phone Call I’ll Never Forget

It was a Saturday evening, just after 6 p.m., when the phone rang.

“Mrs. Stayner?”

That voice. That police officer voice. The one that’s trained to sound calm even when delivering the worst news imaginable.

“Yes?”

“There’s been an accident. Your son Steven was involved in a motorcycle collision. He’s been taken to Merced Community Medical Center.”

I don’t remember the drive to the hospital. I don’t remember who drove us or what we said. All I remember is the cold terror flooding through my veins, the desperate prayer running through my mind: Please, God, not again. Please don’t take him from me again.

But by the time we got there, it was already too late.

Steven had been riding his motorcycle home from work on Santa Fe Avenue when a car pulled out of a driveway directly in front of him. The driver, a man named Antonio Loera, said his car’s carburetor had malfunctioned, that the engine died just as he pulled out.

Steven hit the car and was thrown from his motorcycle. He wasn’t wearing a helmet.

The head injuries were catastrophic. He was pronounced dead at 5:30 p.m., just minutes after arriving at the hospital.

My son—my beautiful, brave, heroic son who’d survived seven years of hell and come home to save another child—was gone.

And this time, he wasn’t coming back.

Grief Has No Words

People ask me which was worse: losing Steven the first time, or losing him the second time.

What a question. What a terrible, impossible question.

The first time, I had hope. For seven years, I held onto the belief that Steven was alive somewhere, that someday he’d come home. The not-knowing was agony, but hope kept me breathing.

The second time, there was no hope. There was just a casket and a funeral and a grave in the Merced District Cemetery.

Steven Gregory Stayner. April 18, 1965 – September 16, 1989. Twenty-four years old.

He’d only been home for nine years. Nine years out of a lifetime that should have stretched decades into the future. Nine years of trying to heal, trying to build a family, trying to be normal.

It wasn’t enough. God, it wasn’t enough.

Antonio Loera and the Injustice

Antonio Loera fled to Mexico after the accident. When he finally came back and turned himself in, the district attorney charged him with vehicular manslaughter and felony hit-and-run.

But then an investigation determined that Loera’s car had a defective carburetor. The prosecutor dropped the manslaughter charge.

In the end, Loera was sentenced to just three months in prison for felony hit-and-run.

Three months.

My son’s life—twenty-four years of pain and courage and love—was worth three months in prison.

Jody was devastated. “I’m very, very, very angry,” she told reporters. So was I. But anger doesn’t bring people back. It just burns inside you, eating away at whatever’s left.

The Children Steven Left Behind

Ashley was three years old when her daddy died. Steven Jr. was only two.

They were so little. Too little to understand that Daddy wasn’t coming home. Too little to remember all the ways he’d loved them, protected them, watched over them like a guardian angel.

Jody did her best. She raised those children alone, working hard to make sure they knew who their father was, what he’d endured, what he’d overcome.

But they grew up without him. Without his fierce protection, his gentle humor, his absolute determination to keep them safe.

Sometimes I look at my grandchildren and I see Steven in their faces. Ashley has his smile. Steven Jr. has his eyes. And my heart breaks all over again for everything they lost, everything he lost.

Timothy White: The Little Boy Steven Saved

For years after Steven died, I stayed in touch with Timothy White and his mother Angela.

Timothy grew up knowing that he owed his life to Steven. He became a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy, dedicating his career to protecting others the way Steven had protected him.

“Steven saved my life,” Timothy said in interviews. “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him. Everything I am, everything I’ve done—I owe it to Steven.”

On April 1, 2010, Timothy White died of a pulmonary embolism. He was only thirty-five years old.

First Steven. Then Timothy. Both gone too soon. Both heroes who deserved so much more time.

The Memorial: Making Sure They’re Never Forgotten

In August 2010, twenty-one years after Steven’s death, the city of Merced unveiled a memorial statue in Applegate Park.

The bronze sculpture shows teenage Steven holding the hand of five-year-old Timothy, leading him to safety. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking all at once—a frozen moment of courage, of one damaged child saving another from the same fate.

I stood in front of that statue on the day it was unveiled, with hundreds of people gathered around—friends, family, community members who’d never even met Steven but understood the power of his story.

Angela Gitlin, Timothy’s mother, was there too. We held hands and cried together, two mothers who’d both lost their sons far too young.

“It brings back memories of a very bad time but a very wonderful time,” Angela said. “It changed our life and we got our lives back because of Steven.”

The statue’s plaque reads: “In honor of Steven Stayner and Timothy White, and all missing children.”

Because that’s Steven’s legacy. Not just the boy who came home, but the boy who made sure another child got to come home too.

What Steven Taught the World

Steven’s story changed America.

After he escaped in 1980, after his face was on every newspaper and TV screen in the country, parents started paying attention. They started teaching their children about stranger danger. They started walking their kids to school, watching them more carefully, refusing to believe that “it can’t happen here”.

Steven’s bravery—both in escaping and in speaking out afterward—helped create the missing children’s movement we know today.

He worked with law enforcement to understand how predators operate. He taught children how to protect themselves. He gave interviews and made appearances and relived his trauma over and over again because he believed it could save lives.

And it did. God knows how many children are safe today because Steven was brave enough to tell his story.

To My Son, Wherever You Are

Steven, if you can hear me—wherever you are now—I need you to know something.

You were the bravest person I ever knew.

Not because you survived seven years with Kenneth Parnell, though that took unimaginable strength. Not because you escaped and saved Timothy White, though that was the most heroic thing I’ve ever heard of.

You were brave because you kept trying. Even when the world was cruel. Even when you could barely get out of bed because the nightmares were so bad. Even when you felt broken beyond repair—you kept trying.

You tried to be a good son. A good brother. A good husband. A good father.

You tried to build a normal life in a world that would never let you forget the terrible things that had happened to you.

And you succeeded. For nine years, you had a family who loved you. You had children who adored you. You had a wife who saw past all the scars to the beautiful person underneath.

You had a life, Steven. It was too short—God, it was far too short—but it was yours.

I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you when you were seven. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you when you were twenty-four. I’m sorry for all the pain you endured and all the years we lost.

But I’m so proud of you. Prouder than you’ll ever know.

You took the worst thing that could happen to a child and you used it to protect others. You turned your nightmare into a warning, your survival into hope for other families.

That’s your legacy, my beautiful boy. Not the kidnapping. Not the abuse. Not even the tragic accident that took you away from us too soon.

Your legacy is the children who came home because you taught them to fight. The parents who held their kids a little tighter because your story reminded them how precious and fragile life is. The laws that changed because you proved that children are worth protecting.

Your legacy is Timothy White, alive and safe for thirty years because you were brave enough to save him.

Your legacy is love. And courage. And the unbreakable human spirit that refuses to give up, even in the darkest times.

I miss you every single day, Steven. I’ll miss you for the rest of my life.

But I’m grateful—so incredibly grateful—for the nine years we got to have you home.

Rest easy, my darling boy. You’ve earned your peace.

Final Words

They say that when terrible things happen, you have two choices: let it destroy you, or let it transform you.

Steven chose transformation.

He could have spent his life angry, bitter, broken. And no one would have blamed him. What he endured would have destroyed most people.

But instead, he chose to love. To build. To protect. To give other children the safety he’d been denied.

That’s the Steven I want the world to remember. Not the victim. The hero.

The boy who came home. The teenager who saved another child. The young man who became a devoted father and husband. The advocate who worked tirelessly to protect others.

That’s my son.

And I’ll carry his memory—and his courage—with me until the day we meet again.