Whew ..... what a day!!! So, after talking with the local law enforcement, the FBI (several times) and the US Consulate in Mexico (several times) my daughter was on the verge of calling FoxNews to get word out and make this very public.

Last night a family friend, Paco, his wife and three children (twins age 7, and youngest age 3) were on their way to visit family in Mexico. My son-in-law got a call around midnight saying they had been kidnapped and needed money (they were in the Culiacan area). My SIL didn't have his phone on so didn't get the message. Paco then called my SIL's brother and got through and said that they were pulled over, forced at gunpoint to get out of their car and he was marched out into the desert and said they wanted money, they were going to kill him .......and then the call was lost. All calls from that point went to his voicemail.

That's when all hell busted loose .... everyone got up and starting making phone calls.....to his family, to his wife's family, to the police in the towns along the way because they just had an approximate location where they might be based upon their last checkin.......and it wasn't until 10:00 this morning before we heard from anyone again. Everyone was alive and on a bus headed back to the US.

This man has been like a brother to my daughter for the last fifteen years. She is the godmother to the twins and she was so freaked out today not knowing what happened to them. She spent most of the morning getting every agency she knows to do something to find this family and get them home safe. She said that if they hadn't heard something within a 12 hour window she was going to start calling the news agencies, starting with Fox.

After almost 24 hours of ordeal, the family all are safe at home now. I'm not sure how they got from the desert into town after the robbers drove off....I will get the entire story tomorrow. My SIL had to make a 10 hour round trip part way into Mexico to get them and bring them home. Somehow they were put on a bus that got them to Obregon and then one of SIL's friends picked them up and took them to Hermosillo and that's were SIL picked them up.


Imagine being pulled over, threatened with death in front of your wife and children, then robbed and left in the desert in the middle of the night. This was just outside of Culiacan....everyone thinks the robbers and police are in cahoots because when Paco talked to the police there they basically told him .... "everyone knows you don't drive through here after dark".

My daughter said the FBI told her that they couldn't do anything until a file had been opened on them so she asked them to open a file. The Consulate now has a file open also....we'll have to wait and see what, if anything, is done.