Mom took lock of hair to identify daughter

A former family acquaintance has been arrested.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Luz Cuevas took one look at the dimpled, dark-haired little girl with the big brown eyes at a birthday party and instantly knew two things: She was watching her daughter, presumed killed in a 1997 fire, and she needed a way to prove it.
She pretended the 6-year-old girl had gum in her hair, removed five strands from the child's head, folded them in a napkin and placed them in a plastic bag. After locking the evidence in a safe at home, she contacted a local lawmaker for help.
"Because of TV, I knew they needed hair for the DNA," Cuevas said Tuesday.
The DNA tests confirmed the mother's intuition. The girl was her only daughter, Delimar Vera -- the girl everyone else believed had died only 10 days after she was born.
Carolyn Correa surrendered to police in Philadelphia late Tuesday afternoon, said her attorney, Jeffrey Zucker.
Police allege that Correa, 42, snatched the 10-day-old girl from her crib and torched the family's house to cover her tracks. Correa, of Willingboro, N.J., about 20 miles outside of Philadelphia, faces charges including arson and kidnapping, police said.
Cuevas, 31, said Correa was a family acquaintance who announced that she was pregnant during a visit to the new mother shortly after Delimar's birth. The one-time supermarket employee then abruptly ceased contact after the Dec. 15, 1997, blaze.
That raised Cuevas' suspicion, as did several elements of the chaotic night when her home in the Feltonville neighborhood of North Philadelphia burned.
"I went inside the room and looked in the crib and she wasn't there," Cuevas said, adding that the window was inexplicably open though it was a cold winter evening. Police and fire officials that night told the hysterical mother that "maybe it was my nerves," she said.
Correa pleaded guilty to a November 1996 arson at a medical office in Hamilton Township, N.J., near Trenton, and was sentenced in August 1998 to five years' probation and community service, according to court records.
She set the fire to hide evidence that she had been stealing checks from the business, Hamilton police told The Philadelphia Inquirer for today's editions.
Fire officials believed the one-alarm blaze at Cuevas' home was sparked by a home-rigged extension cord connected to a space heater.
The fire was extinguished in 10 minutes, but Delimar's room was gutted, and investigators concluded that the infant's body must have been consumed by the intense heat and flames.
Mother's investigation
Cuevas, who speaks in halting English, said she instantly recognized the child called Aliyah as her daughter at the Jan. 24 birthday party, where she used the ruse of gum in the child's hair to gather a DNA sample.
The party was given by Evelyn Vera, a sister of Delimar's father. Correa was related to the family through marriage, Evelyn Vera told the newspaper.
"When I see her, I saw that she was my daughter," she said. "I want to hug her. I want to run with her."
She sought help from state Rep. Angel Cruz, who represents the poor, largely Hispanic neighborhood where Cuevas lives. Cruz said he was initially skeptical at first but "something inside" told him that there could be something to the bizarre claim.
He called police, who contacted Correa for a DNA test that ultimately proved Cuevas right.
"It's a mother's way. It's motherly intuition," Cruz said.
Cuevas and Delimar's father, Pedro Vera, 39, had a baby boy after Delimar's death but broke up under the strain of losing their daughter. Cuevas also has two other boys who are older than Delimar.
"Right now I want to see my daughter," Pedro Vera said. "I am so happy. I just want to see my daughter."
What's next
Delimar was in foster care Tuesday and remained in the custody of New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services, spokesman Andy Williams said.
It will be up to a Family Court judge to determine where the little girl should live, but no timetable had been immediately set for the courts to hear the case, Williams said.
"I worry she's going to feel like I stole her away from Carol instead of Carol stealing her away from me," Cuevas told the Inquirer.
Citing confidentiality rules, Williams would not say whether child welfare officials knew of any previous problems or when Delimar was removed from the home of Correa, who neighbors said had three older children -- a son in his 20s, a teenage daughter and a preteen son.
"She treated that little girl better than her three other kids," Evelyn Vera said. "She had her in private school. She took her for modeling. She did everything for her."
Neighbors who used garden hoses and fire extinguishers in futile attempts to help Cuevas reach her newborn on the night of the fire reacted to the recent news with joy and anger.
"When I heard it I went and got a drink [to celebrate]. I was happy she was alive," said Jose Rosario, who recalled grabbing a fire extinguisher and desperately trying to enter the window where Delimar was supposed to have been, only to be repelled by the intense flames.
"Somebody could have got hurt trying to save someone who wasn't in there," Rosario said. "The way she hurt those people, she should be put away in a crazy house."