After 10 years, father will be reunited with children

Friday, Jan. 17, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

"It felt kind of like I was a new person - kind of a big weight was lifted off ofme. I felt like my life was whole again," he said Friday evening.

Mary Ann Chave, 34, abducted her daughters, Melinda and Marie Lacovara, from Las Vegas in 1986 after she and Lacovara divorced and she was granted custody. Chavez was denying Lacovara weekly visitation rights and after she failed to make a court appearance, she disappeared with the girls.

Chavez and her daughters, then 3 and 5, lived in California, Utah and Pennsylvania while the three frequently changed their last name. Investigators soon lost track of the three.

Metro Police Detective Todd Rosenberg said he was recently going back through some old cases when he began to investigate Chavez again.

Through medical records here, Rosenberg discovered that Melinda and Marie were trying to seek basic medical care.

On Thursday, police serving a search warrant on a local home found Marie, now 15, living with her maternal grandparents. Investigators then learned that Melinda, 13, was living in San Diego with her mother.

Chavez was arrested by U.S. marshals Thursday night in San Diego. She is awaiting extradition to Las Vegas, where she faces a felony charge of parental abduction. It carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison.

Both girls were taken into protective custody.

Rosenberg said Marie had been living in Las Vegas for about three years and had also spent time in San Diego. She was not aware that she had a father, he said, adding that Melinda just recently found out about her father.

Lacovara, who was still living in Las Vegas, can't believe one of his daughters was so close to him and she was never found until now.

At a youth shelter where Marie is staying, father and daughter were reunited Friday morning. Marie was greeted with a "Welcome Home" sign as the two embraced tearfully.

"We just grabbed each other and hugged. She was very sweet and really ready to greet me as her father," he said. "We cried a little bit. I said 'I love you' and 'I've been looking for you for 10 years."'

Lacovara recognized Marie right away - she looked just like her mother.

For Lacovara, who has four more children with his third wife, it was the end of an exhausting journey and the beginning of another phase of fatherhood.

After the girls were taken, Lacovara contacted numerous organizations that searched for missing children. He wrote letters to school districts and kept in touch with authorities, praying that they would be found.

"The only hope I really had left was when they got old enough they'd come looking for me."

But as the years passed, his faith dimmed.

When detectives called Lacovaa on Thursday to say the children had been found, Lacovara almost didn't believe the news.

"I still won't be actually satisfied until they're actually in my house," he said.

Lacovara spoke to Melinda, who is still in San Diego, by phone on Friday. He hopes to be able to see her next week.

"My 15-year-old, she's willing to come live with me and try and work it out. I was really afraid that I might get rejected. I told her (Marie) I would like her to give me a chance for me to be her dad."