FBI Agent Meets “Baby” He Rescued Over Twenty Years Ago

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All FBI agent Troy Sowers wanted that Friday morning was coffee and donuts. After years of dedicating himself to his work, he had finally arrived at his retirement party.

Instead, a special person from his past walked through the doors: the grown-up version of a baby he rescued from kidnappers twenty-two years ago. That child is now a Marine Corporal.

Corporal Stewart Rembert hadn’t even left the hospital yet when he was snatched from the arms of his mother at St. Clare Hospital in Lakewood, WA. A woman posing as a staff member was able to fake her way onto the labor unit. She walked into the room where Stewart and his mother were staying. The intruder offered to take the new baby to the nursery for the night and the new mother agreed.

A nurse discovered the baby was missing during a routine room check later that evening.

© The News Tribune This FBI agent rescued a kidnapped baby in 1997. They met again on Friday.

An empty bassinet was found feet from the family’s room, just down the hall from a hospital exit.

On the case

A young Troy Sowers joined the case.

Local police began investigating as well. News media helped to spread a sketch of the kidnapper around the state.

Sowers worked out of an FBI office in nearby Tacoma, WA.

“I had graduated from the FBI academy approximately two or three months prior to that,” he told local paper The News Tribune.

It didn’t take long for police to find their suspect. A department store employee noticed a woman shoplifting baby clothes. She had a baby in her arms. That employee followed the woman, took down her license plate and then called 9-1-1.

Officers arrived quickly at the woman’s home and found items consistent with having a new baby, but Stewart was nowhere to be found.

Sowers was responsible for the interrogation. Local police joined him.

“When we really got suspicious talking to her, the local detective went over to the stepdaughter and asked, ‘Where is the baby at?’ The daughter broke down and said, ‘I don’t know. We put him next to a dumpster,’” Sowers remembered during the interview.

When the kidnapper arrived home with the baby just hours before, she lied to her kids that she bought the baby for $500. After seeing a story about the kidnapping on local news, she decided to dump the baby.

The rescue

Sowers talked the kidnapper into showing the police where the baby was. She guided them to an alley behind a store.

“As we pulled up behind that store, right next to the dumpster was a little cardboard box and she pointed to the box and said, ‘He’s in that box,’” Sowers said.

“I jumped out of the car and went over to the box and saw Stewart there and picked him up,” Sowers said. “[The baby] wasn’t crying or anything. He was probably exhausted. He was probably laying there a few hours.”

Sowers held the baby until medical help arrived.

“We had an agent sitting at the parents’ house so they quickly got word to them that he had been found,” Sowers said.

As a young father himself, Sowers was incredibly happy to help reunite the baby with his family.

“This is what I came to the FBI for, to do good things like this,” he said. “We had found him, he was alive, he was going to be returned to his parents. It doesn’t get any better than this.

“Working a kidnapping case in the FBI is the quintessential thing that people think about the FBI,” he said. “When you find the victim and the victim is still alive, it’s a great day.”

The kidnapper went to prison for ten years.

“It’s clear that what occurred here was outrageous,” Pierce County Superior Court Judge Arthur Verharen declared during sentencing. “That baby was taken from his mother’s bed and deposited in the garbage.”

Surprise

“In one of my final supervisors’ meetings, I commented that I felt like I’ve had a pretty solid career,” Sowers said. “In the first couple of months, I pulled a baby out of a box. And when I ended my career, I got to meet Dolly Parton here in Tennessee.”

Sowers’ coworkers looked around on Facebook and found Stewart’s profile.

The retirement party started with a retelling of the famous case.

“I had a few seconds to tell myself, did they actually bring him here in person?” Sowers remembered.

Then Stewart came in to an incredible round of applause.

“When I saw him, I had to pause a couple of seconds to keep my composure,” Sowers said.

“It was a wonderful way to leave the bureau,” Sowers said. “To actually see the good he is doing and to meet him on my last day in the office.”

Stewart couldn’t believe he was meeting the man that rescued him.

“I was just really ecstatic they would come to me 22 years later,” Rembert said.

Sowers couldn’t help but share some fatherly wisdom:

“It’s a cliché, but I told him to continue to pay it forward,” Sowers said. “Do good for others.”

via NBC News

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