Overprotective Mother
When I was six, my mom and dad took my younger sister and me to a baseball game, leaving my grandmother to babysit my youngest sister. When we got back, my grandmother told my folks that two guys had come by the house with photography equipment and asked whether a young girl with red curly hair lived there, a description that sounded just like my sister who was at the game with me.
They said they had spotted her and that she would be a great child model for some advertising work they were doing. When my grandmother said she wasn’t home they said they would come back another time. My grandmother and mom didn’t think much about it, but my dad got an awful feeling in his stomach. He said “Something’s not right here” and called the authorities.
15 minutes later, several FBI agents showed up and began conducting interviews with my grandmother and my parents while I ran around and showed the agents my helicopter. The truth was bone-chilling. Turns out we had been targeted by a child theft ring; the photographers would take a bunch of photos and wait until the toddler threw a tantrum and then they would ask the mother to go grab a toy to keep the child entertained.
While the mother was out of the room, they would grab the child and bolt, leaving everything else behind. The FBI told my folks that my sister had likely already been sold and would have been out of the country within 24 hours if they got her. We were advised to change preschools and other aspects of our daily routine. It still gives me the chills to think about what could have happened to her.
Needless to say, my mom became pretty overprotective; it was a few years before she even trusted us with a babysitter. We are just fortunate that everything worked out.