Hooper native earns praise for helping find missing boy

Marilyn Mueller is one proud grandma.

While most people are pleased when their grandchildren earn recognition, the Fremont woman has been thrilled with accolades given to her granddaughter, Tara Stratman Krepela.

A former Hooper resident, Krepela earned kudos from Omaha Police after she helped locate a 7-year-old autistic boy who’d been missing for two hours.

Krepela did her good deed at 5 p.m. Tuesday on the way home from work at Dr. Sol Kutler’s office where she is a dental assistant.

Waiting in her car at the stoplights of Farnam and 72nd streets, Krepela noticed a young boy sitting on a bus stop bench.

“He got up and walked across the street in front of my car,” she said.

The boy was holding a blue blanket.

When the light turned green, Krepela turned north on 72nd Street.

He was walking south.

She was only a couple of blocks away when her cell phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number.

Normally, Krepela doesn’t answer calls if that’s the case.

This time she did.

It was a computerized recorded message from an organization called A Child Is Missing. The non-profit

organization has software with the ability to search listed phone numbers, identify them by zip code provided by police, and call up to 1,500 at one time in the area where the child was last seen. If that doesn’t work, the computer searches out further, contacting 1,500 more numbers and keeps doing so until it gets a response, said Lt. Adam Kyle of the Omaha Police Department.

The recording had a description of a missing child.

“They said what he was last wearing, what he looked like, where he was last seen and the number to the Omaha Police station,” she said.

So Krepela called the number and described the boy she’d just seen. She spoke briefly, but said police called her back five times afterward for more information. She reached her home about 10 minutes after seeing the child.

It took police 45 minutes to an hour to locate the boy after her first call. He was about a half block from where she’d last seen him.

“After that, the police chief called and thanked me and said I was up for some award,” she said.

Kyle commended Krepela for her efforts.

“It was a blessing. She could have just ignored it,” he said.

Television crews came to her home for interviews.

Krepela said she learned that the boy’s name is Timmy. Kyle says the child has the mental capacity of a 1 1/2-year-old and only communicates by clapping his hands.

Timmy is fine and back at home, but wandered three miles from home, Krepela said.

That amazes Kyle.

“There was no way we would have considered searching 40 blocks from the area,” Kyle said.

Krepela also was astounded.

“He had to have crossed Maple, Blondo and Dodge Street �” and at Dodge, he crossed in rush hour traffic,” she said. “I don’t know how nobody �” in the hours he was missing �” ever called in after seeing him walking by himself.”

Krepela, a 1999 Logan View High School graduate, and her husband, Mark, live in Omaha with their daughter, Sophia Charlie, who’s almost a year old.

Some might say that Krepela spotted the little boy because she is a mom.

“I still would have probably thought (a child walking by himself on a busy street at rush hour) was odd even if I wasn’t a mom. But being a mom, you notice things like that,” she said.

She also thinks several people in the area probably got similar calls on their cell phones, but didn’t recognize the number and answer their phones.

Despite the fact that she answered a call to duty, Krepela doesn’t call herself a hero.

“I think I was just doing the right thing. There’s a lot of people who do more heroic acts every day than what I did,” she said. “I’m just glad it had a happy ending.”

Her grandmother is excited and even jokes about getting a big head over her granddaughter’s efforts.

“My head can’t hardly sit on my shoulders today,” she said. “Every time I think about it, I start bawling.”