CHICAGO — A real-life Home Alone ended less than comically on Tuesday when the parents of two young children returned from a nine-day Christmas vacation and were arrested aboard their plane on charges of leaving their daughters behind.
David and Sharon Schoo of Campton Township, an upper middle class community west of Chicago, were charged with felony child abandonment within moments of the plane’s arrival at O’Hare International Airport.
Authorities said the couple had no idea that they were being sought by police and had barely unbuckled their seat belts when a Chicago police officer met them and read them their rights.
The plight of the children, Nicole, 9, and Dana, 4, was discovered on Dec. 21 after a smoke alarm accidentally went off and the older sister called 911. A neighbor said the emergency operator, fearing there was a fire, told the little girls to go outside. They ran barefoot through the snow to a neighbor’s house.
Tanned and silent, the parents, who had been vacationing in Acapulco since Dec. 20, were led by police through the jammed terminal as passersby swore at them and jeered, “Bah, humbug!” and “Scrooge!”
They were later jailed in lieu of $50,000 bail each. Their children were in foster care pending a dependency court hearing next week.
Kane County authorities said the couple’s relatives were baffled at why the girls had been left home unsupervised. The girls’ maternal grandmother knew the Schoos were going on vacation, and she offered to care for the children, but the couple assured her that arrangements had been made, police said.
The neighbor who took the children in said they had been left on their own before.
“Nicole told the police they were alone for four days when their parents went to Massachusetts last summer,” said Connie Stadelmann, who has lived next door to the Schoo family since they moved to their three-bedroom home a year and a half ago. Stadelmann said Sharon Schoo, 35, was a “stay-at-home mom.” She was unsure of the occupation of David Schoo, 45.
In the hit movie Home Alone, a suburban Chicago family goes to Paris and accidentally leaves their son, Kevin, behind. While his mother frantically struggles to return to him, the little boy has a series of slapstick adventures that end happily.
But in a brief interview on Monday with a local television station, Nicole said the experience was “quite scary” at times.
“For a long time, I was feeling really lonely and wondering what they were doing,” she said. Her parents told her and her sister that they should take care of themselves while they were away, Nicole said.
Stadelmann said she had no idea the children had been left behind. It was only after the smoke alarm went off that she noticed the two children shivering in their yard.
“My son saw them outside and told them to come in,” Stadelmann said. “They were barefoot. This isn’t California — it’s cold out! I wrapped them in blankets and asked the kids where their parents were. Nicole said, ‘They’re in Mexico.”‘
A spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services said the sisters were placed in a foster home on Dec. 21, then turned over to Sharon Schoo’s mother in nearby Aurora the next day. But on Tuesday they were returned to foster care at the grandmother’s request, pending a hearing on Jan. 5.
Officials in Campton Township said child abandonment is practically unheard of in their community.
“Historically, and I’m guessing, but there has never been a case like this in Kane County,” said David Clark, administrative chief for the Kane County State Attorney’s Office.
Other residents expressed shock.
“I don’t understand how they could afford to go to Mexico, but they couldn’t afford a baby sitter,” said Sue Richards, of neighboring St. Charles. “I wouldn’t leave my 5-year-old alone for five minutes.”
But Eric O’Neil, another neighbor, reserved judgment.
“When I first heard about it, I did say to myself, ‘This is like Home Alone,” the 20-year-old salesman said. “But these parents knew they were leaving their kids, and they didn’t even call home.
“Something’s fishy. I’m pretty interested to hear the parents’ side of the story.”
