Santa Clara man receives federal award for rescuing kidnapped baby
A Santa Clara man credited with rescuing a kidnapped infant last summer was honored Wednesday by the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., for his quick and decisive thinking that saved the child.
Colin Blevin, 45, was recognized with the Missing Children’s Citizen Award during a ceremony “honoring the exemplary and heroic efforts of agencies, organizations and individuals to protect children.” The ceremony was held two days ahead of Friday’s National Missing Children’s Day.
Acting Associate Attorney General Jesse Panuccio presented a certificate of recognition to Blevin, and said he and the other honorees highlight the role that alert and vigilant citizens can play in the cause of fighting child exploitation.
Blevin “is a concerned citizen whose courage compassion and vigilance helped bring home an abducted baby,” Panuccio said. “Through both public service and private acts, these extraordinary people displayed ingenuity, resourcefulness, and an especially high order of civic responsibility.”
“Selfless acts like this one remind us that there is still much good in the world,” Panuccio added. “Thank you, Mr. Blevin, for this incredible act of kindness.”
Blevin’s hero turn unfolded the morning of July 17, hours after a 1-year-old boy was left in an idling car in a driveway in the town of Soledad in Monterey County. His father had gone into his house to hurriedly grab something, and returned to find his Honda Accord — and son — had vanished.
An Amber Alert was
sent out at the request of Soledad police. Blevin told this news organization after the July rescue that he was not aware of the alert when he got to work a couple of hours later at Ciarra Construction on Walnut Street in San Jose, and saw the Accord blocking the entrance to the corps yard. He got out to tell the driver to move and spotted a baby in a car seat in the back of the vehicle.
The driver, who had been muttering to himself and seemed out of sorts, complied with Blevin’s request. As Blevin pulled out in his work truck, he also noticed a man and woman standing nearby. The couple, who lived in an RV, were awakened by the driver knocking on their door, apparently trying to leave the baby with them.
At one point during the encounter, Blevin said the man was blatantly “breaking into another car right in front of us,” in an apparent attempt to steal another vehicle. The woman in the RV made a quiet plea to Blevin to help her save the child.
Blevin recalled asking the man if the baby belonged to him and the man replied with a rambling account of how a woman let him borrow the Honda
and that the baby was hers. Blevin wasn’t convinced, and that the baby’s condition didn’t “jibe with this dirty, scruffy tweaker guy.”
“I take the baby and I put him on my trailer, and I said, ‘I’m calling 911,’ ” he said in July. “The guy didn’t really seem to care. I think he realized he messed up. He was in for a stolen car, and he stole a baby. He stole a child.”
When San Jose police arrived, they realized that they were dealing with the baby taken from Soledad.
“Then I find out I helped save an Amber Alert baby,” he said. “I was in the right place to help.”
The suspected kidnapper was arrested in Salinas a few hours later after he decided to return to Monterey County. He was later convicted and sentenced to five years in prison.
Blevin was recognized alongside Maryland-based sex-crimes detectives who were honored for their work fighting child exploitation and child pornography and locating missing children, and a Michigan fifth-grader who won a poster contest themed around National Missing Children’s Day.