Police Arrest 4 in Kidnaping of Woman, Child

The kidnaping ordeal of a Bonita woman and her 2-year-old daughter ended Sunday night almost 36 hours after they were seized at gunpoint, authorities said.

Chula Vista police worked with the FBI, Pacific Bell and a San Diego Police Department SWAT team to locate 31-year-old Catalina Campos and her little girl, who were under guard in a home in Clairemont, Chula Vista Sgt. Alan Smith said.

They were abducted at gunpoint about 8:30 a.m. Saturday from their home, which falls within the Chula Vista police jurisdiction, officials said. Within hours, the captors paged the woman’s husband and demanded $300,000 in ransom, Smith said.

A housekeeper and 11-month-old baby who were home at the time were not abducted, Smith said.

Police worked with Pacific Bell and the FBI to trace the page, but the captors were using a cellular phone, which complicated efforts, Smith said.

They were able, however, to narrow the search, he said.

But the abductors’ hide-out remained a mystery until an FBI agent came up with a loan document ruse, Smith said.

“The FBI agent felt if we made up some phony documents to get a loan against (the Campos’ home) we could get them to meet. (Campos’ husband) called them and said, ‘I’m all ready to get a loan against my home but I can’t because I need my wife’s signature,’ ” Smith recalled.

The Chula Vista Police Department called in a realtor, who helped draw up the phony papers, police said.

While the captors met the husband at Fashion Valley, they were being monitored by agents and a plane, which then followed them to the Clairemont home of one of the suspects when they took the papers back for Campos to sign.

About 6 p.m., the captors returned to a store near Balboa and Genessee avenues with the signed papers.

In the hours that followed, police were able to apprehend three suspects who had left the house in two cars, Smith said. About 9:30 p.m. a San Diego Police Department SWAT team went to the house and found a fourth abductor carrying a pistol.

All told, Carlos Cordero, 30, of the 4600 block of Clairemont; Armando Salman, 39, of Mazatlan, Mexico; Jose Lopez, 31, of Sonora, Mexico; and Francisco Jimenez, 35, of Tijuana, were taken into custody on suspicion of kidnaping for ransom, false imprisonment and conspiracy, Smith said.

Police believe Salman was involved in some kind of business dealing with Campos’ husband--who owns a construction company and hardware store in Tijuana--in the mid 1980s, Smith said.