Man becomes hero after rescuing girl

Associated Press

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.

The timing was just right for saving the life of a 6-year-old girl and for turning a 24-year-old mechanic and father of two young daughters into a hero.

It was coincidence that Antonio Diaz Chacon had come home from work early to spend time with his family Monday afternoon. It was also a coincidence that the family’s washing machine had just gone out, forcing them to do laundry a block down the road at a relative’s home.

Had it not been for that, Diaz Chacon wouldn’t have been there to see the girl thrown into a van as another neighbor yelled for the would-be kidnapper to let the child go.

Diaz Chacon is credited with saving the girl after chasing the van through a maze of neighborhoods to the edge of where Albuquerque’s sprawling housing developments meet the desert. It was there where the van crashed into a pole, the suspect fled and Diaz Chacon was able to rescue the girl and take her home.

He didn’t think twice about his actions.

“The way he grabbed her and threw her into the van, I knew it wasn’t right,” he said, as a swarm of media stood outside his home Tuesday night to hear his story. The events were interpreted and relayed from Spanish to English by his wife.

“I knew I had to catch him. I had to get the girl back from him and take her home, back where she belongs,” he said.

It all happened so fast on a sidewalk in the normally quiet mobile-home park, where even on the evening after the abduction kids played freely in the streets on their bikes and pushed scooters as food vendors sold roasted corn and other snacks.

A pair of 911 calls came in quick succession.

On one, a frantic 12-year-old says her little sister is missing. On the other is Diaz Chacon’s wife, Martha.

“We are outside of my mom’s house here,” she told the dispatcher. “We heard a man going, ‘Hey, hey let her go. Let her go.’ So we turn around ...

“The man came running to us and said, ‘They stole a little girl.”’

Phillip Garcia, 29, had snatched the girl moments earlier, taking her away in a blue van, police said.

Diaz Chacon jumped in his black pickup and gave chase.