Kidnap Pulls Town Together Porch Lights Burn, Polly Klaas Searchers Join Effort To Find Boy

The porch lights burn all night long in Beaumont to guide 10-year-old Anthony Martinez safely home from wherever he may be.

It’s been a week since a knife-wielding stranger forced the friendly fourth-grader into a pickup truck while the boy played in a dirt alley behind his apartment building. And the people of Beaumont and beyond have come together to try to find the youngster.

On Thursday, FBI agents, sheriff’s deputies and police officers, residents on horseback and veterans of the search for Polly Klaas looked for Anthony in the rugged wilderness surrounding the mostly poor desert town of 10,000.

“No one’s losing hope. We’re not giving up yet,” Officer Mike West said as he got ready to set out on an off-road motorcycle. Others searched with bloodhounds and by helicopter.

Morongo Indians from the reservation near Beaumont paid for a newspaper advertisement in USA Today on Thursday that showed Anthony’s picture and a sketch of the suspect. Anthony’s classmates have released more than 1,000 cherry, helium-filled balloons with notes about his disappearance.

Hundreds of volunteers have taken off from work to post fliers and tie yellow ribbons around trees, utility poles and car antennas. They have flooded businesses with posters and set up headquarters at City Hall. They cook for the searchers, plan fund-raisers, run a hotline and collect money for a reward.

The City Council passed a resolution urging residents to leave their porch lights on each night until Anthony returns, “as a symbol to help light his way home.”

People here aren’t surprised by the outpouring of support. A few years ago, this Southern California town 25 miles west of Palm Springs formed a prayer group when two teenagers committed suicide. “It’s a very loving town,” Janice Feldman said.

So far, authorities have interviewed 300 people. Of those, 75 were considered possible suspects. All but two have been eliminated as suspects, Sgt. Mitch White said.

Earlier this week, Anthony’s mother, Diane Medina, and his stepfather, Ernesto Medina, talked via satellite with Mark Klaas, whose 12-year-old daughter, Polly, was kidnapped and killed in 1993 in Northern California. Klaas offered them advice.

“You have to first of all make sure that somebody that you know and somebody that Anthony knows is at your telephone at all times, so that if and when he calls in, there will be a friendly known voice on the other end of the phone,” Klaas said.

Authorities searched a rural area east of town on Wednesday after a man faxed in a map of a “vision” he had of where Anthony might be. But there was no trace of the boy, and there are no plans to bring the man in to help.

“He is not a psychic or anything. He said that he sometimes gets impressions and draws them out. He felt that if what he had was correct and did not act on it, it would weigh heavy on his conscience,” White said.

Anthony, who loves to read the sports pages and comics every morning and has a sweet tooth for Hershey bars, was grabbed on April 4. A stranger offered a dollar to Anthony, his stepbrother 6-year-old Marcos Medina and two friends if they would help him find his lost cat, the youngsters told police.

The man apparently lunged at Marcos, but the boy, having forgotten to tie his shoe as usual, tripped and lost a shoe, Medina said. The man then took Anthony. Marcos screamed: “A man got Tony, and he’s got a knife!”

Even in this small town where people greet each other with smiles, Medina said, she never let Anthony far from her sight.

“He was only 10,” she said. “He wasn’t allowed to go out without permission. There never was a time I could say I didn’t know where Tony is.”