Baby Sitter

An attorney for a Santa Ana surgeon's ex-wife cried "cover-up" Wednesday when it was learned that prosecutors in her trial on charges of kidnaping her children from her ex-husband had known for months of suspicions regarding his sexual conduct with one of the children. Orly Lapin claims that she took the two children, a boy who was a year old at the time and a girl who was 3, from Dr. Ron Lapin, who had legal custody, because she believed that he was sexually molesting the 3-year-old.

Nancy Lanza's influence on her son was apparent even to the stylists who cut his hair. They said Adam never said a word when his mother brought him in for haircuts every few weeks. Adam Lanza would sit wordlessly in the chair and stare at the floor as his mother gave instructions. “He would just sit there and not speak. And I'll tell you the honest truth, as a mother, I just thought the child couldn't speak. I never gave it a second thought. I thought he couldn't speak,” said Diane Skuba, who owns the salon in Newtown, Conn., where the Lanzas went for years.

A baby sitter convicted of killing her neighbors' 9-month-old daughter in 2005 was sentenced Friday to 25 years to life in prison, authorities said. Sunyhe Choi, 32, was caring for the daughter of Kyung Min and Seung Jeong, at Irvine's Park West Apartments when the baby stopped breathing. The baby was taken to Irvine Regional Hospital, where she was pronounced dead. An autopsy revealed that the child had suffered several blows to the head. Choi is married and has a 4-year-old child.

A missing 2-year-old girl was found in a Long Beach apartment with her baby sitter, Aquanetta Evans, after a citizen recognized a composite drawing of the woman shown on television and notified police. The child, Kiwania Whitfield, had not been seen since last Thursday when her mother, Estelle Williams, turned her over to Evans in South-Central Los Angeles. Los Angeles Police Detective Tony Celli said the baby was in "excellent" shape. Evans, 21, was booked for investigation of child stealing.

The baby sitter is going home for the holidays. She hasn't seen her mother in seven years. In just a few weeks, she and her children will board a red-eye to Guatemala. As they doze, stars will fly past the airplane windows and an entire continent will turn, like time itself, below. Seven years ago, the baby sitter's brown-skinned daughter was a toddler, and her teenage son was a bashful 11-year-old. Her mother--their grandmother--did the traveling on that visit.

So Eric Young can't talk with his bosses on how the team plans to use his talents (?) next year. He has to have his agent tag along. When most employees talk with their bosses about their future with the company, I don't think many take a baby-sitter along with them. BOB MAGNUSON, Pomona Todd Hollandsworth is a solid .300 hitter, fields well at four positions, doesn't complain when treated like a worn-out shoe and acts like a mature adult. When are the Dodgers going to dump this misfit?

Re "Suspects Chafing in Ankle Monitors," June 21: Requiring undocumented worker Juan Chavez to wear an ankle bracelet and undergo electronic surveillance for 10 weeks because he "got job after job in Northern California without the required work permits" epitomizes the hypocrisy of how our immigration laws are crafted and prosecuted. If Chavez belongs in ankle bracelets, so does the guy who hired him; so do I, and more than likely, so do you, dear citizen reader. Let those who have never hired an undocumented gardener, baby-sitter, farmworker or handyman cast the first stone.