Gwinnett County

Father reunites with son once listed as missing, endangered

GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — A Gwinnett County child once on the national missing and endangered children’s list is back home.

Roberto Vasquez said his world fell apart when he came home last fall to find his fiancee and his son, Kayden, gone without warning.

“I come home and it’s the worst nightmare I have ever walked into,” Vasquez said. “We didn’t have any idea whether he was alive, whether he was OK, whether he was fed.”

The father did not give up on finding his son. He hired lawyers, convinced judges in three states he deserved custody since his former fiancee moved around frequently and then spent thousands of dollars trying to track down his son.

“Just days felt like years -- the minutes that went by, just the pain that my family felt,” Vasquez said.

“This has just been unbelievable -- the amount of money and time that has been invested into this,” relative Kalli Meija said.

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Vasquez won full custody of his son in court, but no one could find the child or his mother.

With the help of private investigator Robin Martinelli, Vasquez's son was found in Arizona. The team that found him spent days convincing authorities to give Vasquez his son.

“We did everything the police told us to do, but the police didn’t act, so we had to act. We got on a plane,” Martinelli said.

A father reunited with his son after his mother disappeared with him without warning.

Martinelli said her job is to bring people back together.

“My industry is not all about being in the woods and sneaking around and cheating spouses. My industry is also about making a life come home,” she said.

Vasquez said it feels as if he and his son had never been apart.

“To finally have him is one of the greatest feelings that I can ever imagine,” he said.

Vasquez’s lawyer said he expects the child’s mother to come back to Georgia and take the issue back to court.