Photo By Jeannette I. Andrade
After being offered by a good Samaritan a place to stay, a 36-year-old passenger who just arrived at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) from Jordan could have thought she might as well leave behind her three-month-old son with the kind stranger, too.
The passenger, who also left behind her passport and the baby’s things with the stranger, never returned for the baby she had brought home from Jordan.
The good Samaritan, Myrna Bonaobra, 36, of Rodriguez, Rizal told the Inquirer that she was meeting a friend at the Naia terminal 1 on Friday morning when she encountered Vilma Lastima, also 36, who arrived on an Etihad Airways flight from Amman late Thursday night.
“I’m a friendly person. We just started having a chat even if I did not know her. She told me she lives in Davao and had nowhere to stay here (in Metro Manila),” Bonaobra said in Filipino, adding that both of them were overseas workers.
“I offered for her to stay at my home temporarily because I was concerned for the baby and she seemed to really need a place to stay,” Bonaobra said.
Bonaobra said that Lastima gratefully accepted the offer but at around 10 a.m., Lastima asked her to “momentarily” look after her son because she had to run an errand.
“I even teased her that she might not come back,” the good Samaritan recalled, adding that as an assurance she would return, Lastima handed over her baby’s travel documents before leaving.
But hours passed and Lastima never returned, prompting Bonaobra to seek the help of the Airport Police Department (APD).
Based on the travel documents, the baby was born on August 30 in Amman, Jordan by Lastima, who lives in Maco, Davao.
The APD’s Nestor Dugan said that the baby will have to be turned over to the care of the Department of Social Welfare and Development as part of the standard operating procedure.
Even then he expressed hope that the baby’s mother would return for him, although Dugan assured her that the APD will exert efforts to track her down./rga