Here is the newspaper article that the Matel story was based on.
Thanks Magnum
SAMMAMISH - The parents of a murdered Oregon boy thanked the public Wednesday for helping them through what they called, "a very, very difficult time."
And KOMO 4 News has learned Matal Sanchez's short life included time here in our area.
Susi Strom saw the pictures of 4-yearold Matal on the news, and she recognized him right away.
"He had these beautiful big chubby cheeks and a little droopy eye and beautiful big brown eyes," she describes.
Matal died in Oregon from a blow to the head.
His step-grandmother, Christine Coffman, is charged in his murder.
She appeared aloof in court at her arraignment Tuesday, where she was ordered held without bail.
It's the first Strom has seen or heard of Matal since 2001.
But that year, in his infancy, Matal spent weeks at a time with her family in their Sammamish home.
She says Matal's mother would leave the baby with a friend. And that friend brought Matal here.
"He'd come to us in diapers that hadn't been changed in three or four days, just full, just falling off of him. He had such terrible diaper rash, I took him to the doctor," Strom says.
Matal was just a year younger than Strom's youngest son, Jeremy. She would dress Matal in Jeremy's clothes and let him sleep in Jeremy's crib.
"Once you fed him and cleaned him up and got the diaper rash cleared up, he was such a happy, happy, healthy child," Strom says.
Strom says she tried to get the state to intervene, but Matal eventually wound up with his family in Oregon, and she never saw him again.
Wednesday, Matal's parents thanked searchers through a spokesman but otherwise are in seclusion.
Strom doesn't know how Matal spent the last three years, and she never met his step-grandmother.
But she's grieving for the boy who lived too short a life.
"He obviously wasn't appreciated," she says.