Police say Joe Kurihara was so drunk after leaving a wedding in Pasadena, California that he forgot where he left his son. INSIDE EDITION has the shocking story.
"[I said] My baby is gone! When am I going to find my baby?" Kristin Altamirano tells INSIDE EDITION.
Imagine her terror when she learned that her 3-year-old son Dylan was missing.
Police say his father was so drunk he forgot where he left the child!
"What he did was stupid, stupid, stupid," Altamirano says.
The couple was attending a wedding at the Pasadena Masonic Temple in Pasadena, California when Dylan and his father left together.
An hour later, Dylan's father, Joe Kurihara, was arrested for public drunkenness...but there was no sign of Dylan or the family's SUV.
"[I said] Where is my son, Joe? He's like, 'I don't remember, I'm so drunk I don't remember,' " she tells INSIDE EDITION.
Police used tracker dogs to search for the child, but had no luck.
Then Rowdy Metzger, who had been following the unfolding story, joined the hunt.
"I said okay, I'm going to go out and find him," Metzger told INSIDE EDITION.
Incredibly, he found Dylan in a parking garage just five blocks from where the wedding took place. He had been strapped in a child seat for 25 hours.
"I checked the door and it was unlocked and I opened it and I said, 'Are you Dylan?' And he was frightened. And I just kept saying, 'I'm going to help you,' I gave him the thumbs up [and said] 'It's okay, it's okay,' " Metzger said.
Kurihara pled not guilty to child abuse and other charges.
"Never, never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever [did I] think that he would ever do something like that," says Altamirano.
