Woman who kidnapped 4-year-old Santa Rosa girl at Trader Joe’s granted probation

A woman with a history of mental illness was sentenced Friday to five years of probation for kidnapping a 4-year-old Santa Rosa girl while she shopped with her mother last winter at a Trader Joe’s store.

Tina Szczepanek, 42, told Sonoma County Judge Dana Simonds she doesn’t even remember the Dec. 8 incident, in which witnesses said she scooped the girl up in her arms as the child returned a small shopping cart to the store entrance and carried her out to the parking lot off Santa Rosa Avenue.

Szczepanek only got about 30 feet before the girl’s terrified mother, who had been watching from the check-out line, ran out yelling and retrieved her child. But family members said Friday the life-altering psychological trauma they suffered warranted a stiffer penalty.

The victim’s mother, father and grandmother read lengthy statements pleading for prison time and conveying the degree to which family and friends, more than two dozen of them in attendance, had been negatively affected by the kidnapping.

John and Lexie Pence told the judge their daughter had been transformed from a bright, outgoing child to one who lives with deep fear and depression, sleeping at night with a cardboard sword and homemade wooden shield under the gaze of a statue of the Virgin Mary near her bed.

“No child should be made to feel as though they will never see their family again,” Lexie Pence, 32, told the court. Her husband stood at her side with his hand on her back to comfort her as she occasionally wept. “No child should fear public places, hide when the doorbell rings or sleep with weapons to feel safe. No parents should have to reassure their child that no one will try to take them.”

Szczepanek, who pleaded guilty in the case in March, has been in jail since her arrest, when she told a police officer that she thought the child was her niece and that she wanted to reunite the girl with her mother.

Witnesses said Szczepanek said something like, “She is mine,” when she picked up the little girl, according to court testimony. But once confronted she surrendered the child before walking away.

Deputy District Attorney Javier Vaca argued that the defendant exploited the moment the girl left her mother’s side, picking her up rather than leading her by the hand and then leaving the scene once she had been found out. That suggested a level of criminality for which prison was appropriate, Vaca said.

But Simonds had made clear months earlier her intent to grant Szczepanek probation, barring any new, persuasive evidence or argument.

On Friday, she acknowledged the suffering of the victim and her family and outlined the need to base her ruling on facts and the rights of both sides.

Simonds said Szczepanek’s history, which included childhood trauma, learning disabilities, substance abuse and a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, made probation and a chance for long-term treatment a more appropriate sentence.

Simonds noted that only a day before the kidnapping, Szczepanek had been released from a three-day mental health confinement. She had suffered a bad reaction to medication given her during the stay and left with multiple prescriptions drugs she didn’t know how to manage.

Citing reports that Szczepanek had been seen wandering the store and mumbling before the kidnapping, Simonds said, “At the time that this happened, she was clearly not in her right mind.”

The victim’s parents said that only Lexie Pence’s immediate intervention prevented their daughter from being taken off to “the unknown,” and that the emotional fallout of the incident might be lifelong.

The girl’s grandmother, Theresa Thomasson of Sebastopol, told Simonds, “This was not a candy bar that she slipped in her pocket. ... This was a child.”

Szczepanek, who has no current home, is to remain in Sonoma County Jail for several more months while arrangements are made for a probation transfer that will allow her to go to Massachusetts for residential treatment near family members who are eager to support her during her five-year probation period, Deputy Public Defender Jenny Andrews said.

She is eligible for an eight-year prison term if she violates the terms of her probation.

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 707-521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MaryCallahanB.