Parents

A 6-year-old Sacramento boy with 13 brothers and sisters is back with his family after being left behind at a freeway rest stop for hours. A Placer County sheriff's spokesman said the boy's parents didn't report him missing for about four hours after a motorist found him alone Saturday afternoon. Sheriff's Lt. Jeffrey Ausnow said the boy was left at an Interstate 80 rest area near Colfax, about 50 miles east of Sacramento in the Sierra Nevada foothills. The boy told deputies he came out of the restroom after a day spent playing in the snow to find that the van carrying his parents and siblings had left.

Trapped by smoke, the parents of a 9-month-old girl took a chance and dropped her from their apartment window, hoping that she would be caught four stories below. Their split-second decision paid off as Onur fell safely into the arms of a policeman. The parents, who were not identified, also survived, although the mother was in a hospital two days after the fire in Ludwigshafen, Germany. Some of the building's residents were Turkish immigrants. Authorities were investigating whether arson was involved in the blaze Sunday, which killed nine people, including five children.

As flames consumed her East St. Louis home and prevented her parents from rescuing her and two younger siblings, a quick-thinking 12-year-old saved the other children by kicking out a second-story window and helping them down, firefighters said. Derrionna Adams then leaped 15 feet to safety. Her parents also survived. "This was a blessed day," Fire Chief William Fennoy said.

The son of poor laborers in rural Mexico, Ocario Gonzalez doesn't remember his parents ever helping with his schoolwork. After struggling with his studies for a few years, Gonzalez left school at 12. Now the 42-year-old South Los Angeles factory worker is trying to break that cycle with his daughter, Carolina. When she entered Lillian Elementary School last year, 6-year-old Carolina was ill prepared, Gonzalez said.

A man suspected of killing his parents in a Y2K plot to steal their money was arrested Wednesday, authorities said. If convicted, they say, Jose Alonso Najera Jr., 27, could face life in prison without the possibility of parole. Najera, of Anaheim, allegedly persuaded his parents to take their money out of banks in 1999 and put it in a safe-deposit box in anticipation of the Y2K bug. Then, on Dec. 28 of that year, Najera and an accomplice killed the parents, prosecutors said. Gerard Johnson was convicted in 2000 in the stabbing deaths of Jose Najera Sr., 42, and Elena Najera, 46, who owned a home in Garden Grove.

There is plenty to debate about home schooling, but a new court ruling managed to avoid all reasonable disagreements and instead used a single example of possible child abuse to throw the book at tens of thousands of home schoolers throughout California. The 2nd District Court of Appeal was asked to require the parents of eight children to send them to a regular public or private school, where their welfare could be monitored. A lower court had ruled that the parents had a constitutional right to home school their children.

The couple at the center of an appellate court decision that bans parents from educating their children at home if they lack teaching credentials filed a petition Friday asking the 2nd District Court of Appeal to vacate its ruling and rehear the case. The Feb. 28 appellate ruling has caused alarm among the state's home-school families, who teach an estimated 166,000 students, and has been criticized by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, state Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell and conservative leaders around the nation.

After being laid off from her job as an events planner at an upscale resort, Jo Ann Bauer struggled financially. She worked at several lower-paying jobs, relocated to a new city and even declared bankruptcy. Then in December, she finally accepted her parents' invitation to move into their home -- at age 52. "I'm back living in the bedroom that I grew up in," she said. Taking shelter with parents isn't uncommon for young people in their 20s, especially when the job market is poor.

An appellate court that banned parents who lack teaching credentials from educating their children at home agreed to rehear the matter on Wednesday. The initial ruling by the 2nd District Court of Appeal caused alarm among the state's home-school families, who teach an estimated 166,000 students. It was also criticized by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, state Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell and conservative leaders around the nation. The ruling has never been enforced. An attorney representing parents Phillip and Mary Long, the couple at the center of the case, argued in seeking the rehearing that the ruling relied on outdated legal decisions, misinterpreted California's education code and failed to consider parental rights and religious freedom.

A counselor for a children's home was scheduled to be arraigned today on charges of sexually molesting six boys in his office while they were phoning their families abroad. Victor Salazar, 26, of Santa Ana is accused of molesting the 15- and 16-year-old boys while working at Florence Crittenden Home on Harbor Boulevard, a shelter for children living in the U.S. without parents either because the parents have been deported or the children entered the country alone. Between May 25, 2007, and February 5, 2008, prosecutors allege, Salazar fondled or orally copulated each boy while he was making a personal call to his family in South or Central America.