Parents in Acapulco
David and Sharon Schoo were a normal, upper-middle class couple with two children—they just made a very ill-advised decision. The mother and father left their two daughters, aged 9 and 4, home alone in a town outside Chicago while they took a holiday trip to Acapulco. They told their kids to care for themselves while away. A few days into their vacation, though, the fire alarm in the house went off and the kids called 911, which is when police found out about the situation. The couple was arrested and the children were placed in foster care.
Photo via flickr/JSF306
Boy Masterminds 'Home Alone' Escape
An 11-year-old British boy broke free from his family at Manchester airport, in search of a Home Alone-like adventure in Rome. He boarded a Jet2 flight by pretending to be part of another family making the trip for the holidays. Once on board, he bragged to passengers about giving his parents the slip. His mother had reported him missing back in Manchester. "Heads could roll,” an airline insider told the U.K.’s The Daily Star. “He got on board without a ticket, passport, money or luggage. If he hadn't spoken up, he could have ended up Home Alone in Rome."
MORE: 10 Ways to Keep Kids Happy on a Plane
Photo via flickr/Alexander Savin
Wrong Plane, Wrong City
Just like in Home Alone, 9-year-old Chloe found herself in the wrong city over the holidays. Trying to visit her grandparents in New York, the little girl’s flight was sidelined in Clevelend due to bad weather. She then headed to Baltimore for a layover, but was asked to change planes when she wasn’t supposed to. Southwest Airlines did not inform her mom of the mix-up, and she panicked when Chloe didn’t reach her destination. "It was like the scariest moment of my life to think that they didn't know where she was," her mother told Baltimore’s ABC News 2. Southwest apologized for the mishap, refunded the price of Chloe’s ticket and provided vouchers for another (hopefully better) travel experience.
Photo via flickr/Emlyn Stokes
Left Behind on European Vacation
Israeli parents were headed to Paris from Jerusalem on one of the busiest travel days of the year—and didn’t realize they had boarded their flight with four children instead of five. Their frantic 3-year-old daughter asked airport staff for help finding her parents, who found them aboard a plane just about to take off. Luckily, the family was reunited shortly after, when the little girl and an attendant flew off to Paris on the next flight, according to NBC News.
Photo via flickr/u07ch
A Christmas Mishap
A set of parents with eight children of their own, who were also taking care of their neighbor’s children, didn’t realized they’d left their 5-year-old son Alexander behind at a Christmas lights display in Melbourne. When they took off, each thought the other parent had the little boy in the other car. Alexander was found wandering around alone a couple hours later, where police held him until his parents realized he was missing the next day. The police sergeant said the boy took the oversight in stride, though. "He curled up and went to sleep,” he said, according to The Age. “He was a little bewildered and not used to the surroundings but adapted pretty quickly.”
Air Canada's Heroics
In a crazy rush to catch a connecting flight in Vancouver, a family—mom, dad and grandparents—immigrating from the Philippines left their 23-month-old son behind at the airport. Air Canada employees found the little boy wandering the terminal and scooped him up. It took some investigative work to locate his family, since he was non-English speaking, but with the help of a Tagalog-fluent agent they were able to determine where his family was while they were still in the air … and before they even noticed the child was missing! Props to Air Canada, who also footed the bill to reunite child and father STAT according to Parentdish.
MORE: Airplane Play Time
Photo via flickr/JamesZ_Flickr
A Pre-Birthday Party Problem
Birthday parties are all fun and games until someone gets left behind! While stopping to pick up party-goers at her sister's house in Wisconsin, the mother of a 2-year-old girl accidentally left her daughter behind. With 11 children in her care, the mother drove away from her sister’s home without her daughter—who had been playing with neighborhood kids—and headed for the party, which was in Illinois. The girl was taken into custody by police officers after she was found wandering outside. The mother realized her daughter was missing after 30 minutes, and they were reunited shortly thereafter, according to CBS Minnesota.
A Celeb Mom 'Slip-Up'
A rushed Victoria Beckham grabbed all the essentials before leaving to take her son to school—iPod, check; new baby, _check—_but she forgot to grab her son. She was halfway to his grade school before realizing he was not in the car, and she had actually left him at home. This sparked major Redbook-reader discussion, as apparently Posh isn’t the only mom to have accidentally left her kiddo alone.
Forgotten at the Airport
Station manager and airline crew consultant Claudia Helena Oxee has seen it all in her time working for the airlines. When a 12-year-old unaccompanied minor arrived at New York's JFK airport with his bags but no parents to claim him, Oxee was called. Assuming his parents were running late coming from their home in Connecticut, she waited with him for a few minutes. When they didn’t arrive, she began calling, leaving multiple messages throughout the day. Fearing a serious accident, she made one last attempt to reach them before making arrangements for the 12-year-old, who had been away from home for several months.
The mother finally picked up the phone. Oxee told her she had her son at the airport. Her response, according to the Huffington Post? “Oh, was that today?” The mother asked if the airline would put the boy up in a hotel for the night, which, shocked at the negligence and with a worried child, Oxee refused to do. She did reunite mother and son, giving the boy her phone number just in case he should need her at anytime.
