The Kidnapping of Steven Stayner

In September 1972, seven-year-old Steven Stayner was walking home from school in Merced, California when he was lured into a car by Kenneth Parnell, a convicted child molester posing as a representative of a religious organization. Parnell told Steven that his parents had given him permission to take him — and incredibly, the frightened boy believed him. Steven would spend the next seven years living with Parnell, who renamed him Dennis Parnell and sexually abused him repeatedly, moving frequently across Northern California to avoid detection.

Steven grew up under Parnell's control, attending schools under his assumed name and having little contact with the outside world. In early 1980, when Steven was fourteen, Parnell abducted a second boy — five-year-old Timmy White. This act proved to be the catalyst for Steven's resistance: unwilling to allow a young child to suffer what he had endured, Steven resolved to act. In February 1980, he fled with Timmy White, walking them both through the dark to a local police station in Ukiah, California, and announcing: "My name is Steven Stayner, and I know my first name is Steven."

Steven's extraordinary act of courage led to his reunion with his family and Parnell's arrest and conviction. Parnell received a five-year sentence — widely criticized as far too lenient — while his accomplice received a lesser sentence. Steven's reintegration into his biological family proved deeply difficult after seven years apart, and he struggled with the adjustment throughout his adolescence and young adulthood.

Tragically, Steven Stayner died in a motorcycle accident in September 1989, just nine years after his rescue, at age twenty-four. His story was adapted into the acclaimed 1989 NBC miniseries "I Know My First Name Is Steven," which brought the case to national attention and inspired legislative reforms regarding child abduction and stranger danger education. In a haunting postscript, Steven's older brother Cary became a convicted serial killer — a coincidence that defied understanding and haunted the Stayner family for decades.