Kidnapped Texas Baby Found Alive

A 7-day-old baby kidnapped from her home in Lubbock, Texas, Sunday afternoon has been reunited with her family, and a woman is under arrest - suspected of snatching the infant after winning the family's trust by posing as a nurse in medical scrubs.

Priscilla Nicole Maldonado was taken to University Medical Center at about 8 p.m., where a hospital spokesman said she appears to be fine but was kept overnight for observation.

Police said the infant was found alone in a car seat beneath a carport in 104-degree weather. It was not clear how long she had been outside before authorities arrived.

"She's doing good," Erica Ysasaga, the baby's mother, told CBS News' The Early Show. Priscilla was sleeping in her arms as she spoke.

Ysasaga told The Early Show the past 24-hours were "exhausting, stressful, just wondering about my baby...and finally (there was) excitement."

Early Tuesday, police told CBSNews.com that the suspect "has made a full statement" to authorities, has no relationship to the victim, and the incident remains under investigation.

Lt. Roy Bassett said police rescued the child after a caller from Amarillo suggested they contact a man in Lubbock. Police called the man and asked if his wife had recently had a baby. Bassett says the man replied that she had, but his answers had "obvious flaws."

Police say Stephanie Lynn Anderson Jones, 33, of Amarillo, Texas, is being held on charges of kidnapping and endangering the welfare of a child.

CBS News Affiliate KLBK-TV quotes Bassett as saying that police are also looking at other "persons of interest."

Detectives have been questioning Stephanie Jones as well as her husband.

Bassett says she closely matches the description the baby's family had provided of the woman who had visited them several times in the hospital last week and disappeared with their daughter Sunday after mother and child had gone home.

Police Chief Claude Jones said the woman was taken into custody as she drove into the apartment complex. He said she led officers to the baby.

The abduction happened seven months after the death of Ysasaga's and Jesse Maldonado's 2-month-old daughter, who reportedly choked to death while being burped in October.

Bassett said late Monday that police ruled out foul play in the older baby's death. Early Tuesday, police had no comment on the details of that case.

Early Monday, police studied hospital surveillance video and went door-to-door in a race to find the newborn.

Authorities say the kidnapper apparently blended in with hospital staff in the days before the child's disappearance, as she made friends with the baby's mother, Erica Ysasaga.

Nurses on duty at the time the woman visited the newborn and her family remembered seeing her on repeated visits to the hospital, police said.

"She was not wearing scrubs the hospital issued, nor did she have a hospital identification card," Greg Bruce, a hospital spokesman told The Early Show.

But no one asked why she was not wearing the correct color of scrubs or why she had no identification badge, officials said. Nurses from doctors' offices and other medical facilities often wear scrubs and sometimes visit newborns and their families, Bassett said.

"From what I understand, they don't check and identify every possible visitor who comes to the hospital," he said. "She didn't make any attempt to take the baby from the hospital and didn't spark any suspicions."

In the hospital, the kidnapper led the mother to believe she was a nurse by dressing like one, asking questions about the baby and retrieving towels, the family said. When Ysasaga was released, the woman asked for her address, saying she had a swing and some clothes for the baby.

"She was concerned all the time about my baby, so I thought she was a nurse," Ysasaga told KAMC-TV.

At the time of her abduction, the baby girl had jaundice, a common complication in newborns that causes a yellowing of the skin and the whites of the eyes because of a buildup of pigment in the blood.

On Sunday, according to the baby's mother, the woman visited the family's home and told the mother she wanted to put the newborn in a baby pageant. "I said, 'No, my baby is sick. She can't be out in public,'" said Ysasaga. "She said they would pay me $100 and my baby would win stuff."

The woman then said she had relatives on the next block and wanted to show them the baby, according to Ysasaga. Ysasaga said she wanted to go with her, but the woman disappeared with the newborn while Ysasaga was momentarily distracted by her 2-year-old son, Jesse.

"My son ran ahead of me so I tried to reach over and grab him and when I did that, I turned around. Just like that, my baby was gone," she said.

To gain Ysasaga's confidence, the woman gave Ysasaga a driver's license number and Social Security number, according to police. But neither number matched the name the woman had given the mother. She also left her keys and a ring in the baby's basinette.

On The Early Show, Ysasaga said if she could, she would like to say to her baby's abductor, "I trusted you and you turned around and stole my baby and I don't know why."