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Girl reunited with grateful parents who 'feel blessed'
Sunday, January 06, 2002 By Eleanor Chute, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Charles Kozakiewicz doesn't have any words to describe how he felt yesterday when he and his wife were reunited with their 13-year-old daughter after she'd been ensnared by a stranger on the Internet.
"You get a connection just by eye contact. You can't explain it, and you don't say words," Kozakiewicz said yesterday.
The Crafton Heights teen-ager, Alicia Kozakiewicz, disappeared on New Year's Day without taking her coat or money. From the beginning, Alicia's family worried that the teen, who wants to be a model, may have run off with someone she met while chatting on the Internet.
Authorities tracked her to a townhouse in suburban Washington, D.C., where they found her physically restrained in a bedroom Friday. FBI agents then quickly arrested Scott W. Tyree, 38, of Herndon, Va., a computer programmer who had bragged to an Internet acquaintance in Florida that he had picked up a girl in Pittsburgh and sent him a photo.
Yesterday morning, FBI officials flew Alicia's parents to Virginia, where they met with Alicia and then flew home with her.
"We had one of the happiest moments of our lives," Charles Kozakiewicz said.
"We just feel blessed," said her mother, Mary.
The threesome met informally with reporters on the sidewalk near their home yesterday afternoon, with Alicia sporting a new baseball cap decorated with the letters "FBI."
None of them discussed the particulars of the case, but the parents expressed their thanks for those who had helped to find their child, the granddaughter of the former Allegheny County Jail warden also named Charles Kozakiewicz.
Alicia's father said the experience has made him more acutely realize the treasures of family life.
"Life's going to change a little," he said.
"Our prayers have been answered ... I'm just glad it's not the bad news story."
"It's a lesson for everybody," Mary Kozakiewicz added. "It doesn't matter whether it's a really great kid or not. You can't trust the Internet."
Charles Kozakiewicz said his daughter is "pretty computer literate" and that he isn't "quite as good. I will be in the future."
In the morning yesterday before Alicia and her parents returned home, neighbors MaryAnn Macino, Dave Landi and his daughter, Paige, 8, were out decorating the trees around the Kozakiewicz home with wide yellow ribbons.
They were among the friends and neighbors who had helped to make copies of pictures and spread the word about the missing girl.
U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan said the case couldn't have been solved as quickly without the help of the Western Pennsylvania Crimes Against Children Task Force, formed a few years ago.
One impetus for its formation was the increase in Internet-related crimes of luring children across state lines or trading in child pornography. She said the task force helped to bring together officials from various jurisdictions as well as the skills of agents who had expertise in computers.
Buchanan estimated that there are at least a half dozen federal criminal cases each year in Western Pennsylvania involving a child communicating on-line with an adult. She estimated there is at least one case a year in Western Pennsylvania in which a child has traveled as a result of the communication.
"We have been very fortunate in Western Pennsylvania that we have not had a case involving interstate luring of a child to have ended up in the child's death." she said.
She said young teen-agers are probably the most vulnerable group.
"I think probably one of the reasons is that in the early teen years, that's when children are discovering the Internet, and they are using the computer and they are able to communicate with the adults," she said. "Much of this communication is done through the instant messaging, and your younger children are not going to be able to do that to the same degree that children in the early teens are."
Instant messaging is a service in which two people can answer and receive messages quickly over the Internet. Buchanan said the teens sometimes meet a predator in chat rooms on the Internet and then continue the contact through instant messaging.
How can parents protect their children on the Internet?
"The only way you can really monitor your children is to keep the computer in an area where you can see what they're doing and talk to your children about the dangers of the Internet and constantly remind them the people they are talking to on the Internet may not always be who they claim to be," Buchanan said.
She said that children need to know not to give personal information -- such as their address, phone number and last name -- to strangers.
Tim Huff, special agent for the FBI, said, "The best thing a parent can do is talk to their kids. If the kids don't trust them enough to tell them what they're doing, then all the magic in the world you're going to do on your computer isn't going to help you."
He also recommended putting the computer in the living room instead of the child's room "where they can close the door and talk to whomever they want."
He said parents also can check the history of pages visited on the Internet and install some filtering or recording software. But some of that is limited because users can outwit it.
The FBI provides a parent's guide to Internet safety at http://www.fbi.gov/publications/pguide/pguidee.htm The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has information on Internet safety at http://www.missingkids.com./cybertip/. Click on "Internet-Related Child Exploitation."
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