Newsday Breaking News

BY KAT O'BRIEN
kat.obrien@newsday.com

TAMPA, Fla. -- Is it possible for the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry to get any more heated?

Some would say no, it's already as hyped (or overhyped) as it can get. But Yankees general partner Hank Steinbrenner stoked the flames in an interview for an article in The New York Times' Play Magazine. He struck at the idea that the Red Sox are atop the baseball world, at least with fans.

"Red Sox Nation?" Steinbrenner said in the interview. "What a bunch of -- -- that is. That was a creation of the Red Sox and ESPN, which is filled with Red Sox fans. Go anywhere in America and you won't see Red Sox hats and jackets, you'll see Yankee hats and jackets. This is a Yankee country. We're going to put the Yankees back on top and restore the universe to order."

Steinbrenner, who was at the Yankees' exhibition game against the University of South Florida on Friday, did not return a phone call seeking comment. But in recent weeks, he has made it clear he thinks the Yankees will be a team to be reckoned with this year and in years to come. He told Newsday last week: "We're going to be a power, 10 years or longer."

The entire Steinbrenner family is eager for the Yankees to knock off the Red Sox, who swept the World Series in 2004 -- after an historic comeback from a three-games-to-none ALCS deficit against the Yankees -- and 2007. Meanwhile, the Yankees are 4-13 in postseason play dating to 2004.

Younger brother and fellow general partner Hal Steinbrenner, in a rare interview with the upcoming issue of GQ magazine, said the Red Sox "have a lot of talent, and done very well the past few years, but let me put it this way: I don't think wanted to play us in the ALCS. So I will concede nothing. I think we're better than ."

It's been a while since Red Sox president Larry Lucchino termed the Yankees "the evil empire," but if it's possible to add to the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry, the latest comments should do it.

As for the comment that "ESPN is full of Red Sox fans," ESPN put out this statement: "Fans of all teams work at ESPN -- Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, Braves, Dodgers, etc. Our ratings have consistently shown that both the Yankees and Red Sox enjoy national followings."

Staff writer Neil Best contributed to this story.

BY LUIS PEREZ

The trial of a New Jersey man arrested last year in a highly controversial child sex sting operation that involved Suffolk police, a national TV show and Miss America, began Friday -- with the defendant's attorney describing his client as a victim of a television ratings promotion.

"This was run by a TV production company for the purposes of the media," Robert Macedonio, of Central Islip, said in his opening statements before Judge Barbara Kahn in State Supreme Court in Riverhead.

Macedonio said that there is essentially no evidence that Lawrence Carulli, 49, of Brown Mills, N.J., believed he was making overt sexual statements to detectives posing as a 14-year-old girl in an Internet chat room.

Carulli has been charged with attempted dissemination of indecent material to minors.

He does not deny that he engaged in a chat with a person whose screen name was "CindyLI14." Instead, Macedonio said, Carulli was caught up in a badly thought out sting operation that was funded in part by the television program America's Most Wanted. His client, arrested on an exit of the Southern State Parkway, was taken back to the Bay Shore house and "paraded" down the sidewalk with the show's host, John Walsh, Macedonio said.

But Assistant District Attorney John Cortes told the judge that Carulli knew he was talking to a 14-year-old girl in the chat room, enticed her into having sex and traveled to Bay Shore intending to do so.

"He told Cindy that he liked to kiss, cuddle ... and that he wanted to engage in intercourse," Cortes said.

Eleven men were arrested in the sting, which used the Bay Shore house as a meeting point, prosecutors have said.

Since the April 2007 sting, which included Miss America Laura Nelson and made worldwide headlines, criminal law experts have roundly criticized it as unethical and an abuse of defendants' rights.

BY MATTHEW CHAYES
Newsday Staff Writer

An embattled radio host who ridiculed the poverty of the Mastic area is expected to apologize Monday to a firehouse full of irate residents, a station spokesman said Friday.

But whatever words of sorrow WBLI-FM co-host Randy Spears offers Monday morning at the Mastic fire station won't placate the Concerned Citizens of Mastic Beach, which plans to picket Saturday outside the West Babylon radio station to demand his ouster, said the group's vice president, Victor Zeleny.

"They went after Imus for basically the same thing -- and Imus didn't attack an entire tri-hamlet," said Zeleny, referring to the firing last April at another radio station of shock jock Don Imus for disparaging Rutgers' women's basketball players.

Spears -- who has co-hosted "BLI in the Morning" on WBLI for 21/2 years -- stoked the ire of local politicians and activists on Wednesday by asking a caller from the Mastic area, "Did your pipes freeze under the trailer, or do you have that stuff down there to keep them warm?"

The caller countered that she lived in a house and said she was "very angry," prompting Spears' reply: "Just think, if you win this game, the whole trailer park will be excited."

People in Mastic, Mastic Beach and Shirley have been trying for years to shake the South Shore communities' reputation of a higher-than-usual concentration of low-income residents and sex offenders. The area garnered bad press earlier this year when three separate children reported being accosted by men.

After Spears continued to anger activists the next day by refusing to apologize on the air, station management banned him from the airwaves and suspended him without pay, said station spokesman Todd Shapiro.

Petitions were circulated. Boycotts were threatened.

But assuming Spears apologizes to the station's satisfaction, he will be back on the air though his pay will have been docked for two days, Shapiro said.

Zeleny, the protest organizer, said he would still push advertisers to boycott the station because Spears didn't immediately apologize.

Spears -- station management wouldn't reveal his real name -- has not responded to numerous attempts by Newsday to reach him, including through electronic messages and requests to the station's publicist.

The 106.1-FM morning show is ranked fifth in morning drive-time on Long Island, according to the Arbitron ratings service.

Staff writer John Valenti .contributed to this story.

BY CARL MACGOWAN
Newsday Staff Writer

Marc Dawson was only 1 1/2 miles from his dream.

The 17-year-old Harborfields High School senior had passed a swimming test required to enter the Navy SEAL training program. And over the past eight months, he did enough push-ups, pull-ups and sit-ups to qualify for the elite unit.

The only thing left was a running drill. But Dawson never had a chance to complete it.

Dawson died Monday of drowning, a week after passing out while preparing for SEAL training in a pool at the Huntington YMCA.

On Friday, after burying his son, Ray Dawson Sr. said he would complete the run in Marc's honor.

"I don't think I can do it now," Ray Dawson, 54, told Newsday. "But give me a month of training and I think I can handle it."

Marc Dawson, a YMCA lifeguard, had been submerged for about two minutes on Feb. 18 when lifeguards saw him face down in the pool, Suffolk police said. He was on a break and apparently practicing for SEAL training.

Ray Dawson said the family isn't sure whether Marc was attempting to hold his breath underwater or practicing diving. "It's a mystery," he said. "The only thing we have is theories about him."

Mourners packed Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Church in Centerport on Friday for Dawson's funeral. Five Navy enlisted men in full dress uniform served as pallbearers.

At St. Charles Cemetery in Farmingdale, the pallbearers folded an American flag and presented it to Ray Dawson and his wife, Dianne Dawson, 45.

"It was a greatly moving experience for me," Ray Dawson said. "We're just trying to make sense of the whole thing, of my son just drifting away from me."

The pallbearers were arranged by Dawson's Navy recruiter, Petty Officer 2nd Class Scott Whitaker, 35, of East Meadow. Whitaker said Dawson visited his office regularly and couldn't wait to join the Navy in September.

Dawson was "a good, solid student" who belonged to a modern dance team at Harborfields High School, said principal David Bernardo. He remembered Dawson as a "wide-eyed freshman" who grew up during his high school years.

"Four years later, he had emerged into this strong, mature young man who looked you in the eye and knew where he wanted to go," Bernardo said.

Dawson wanted to join the Navy to "do the biggest thing he could do to protect and defend other people," Bernardo said. "In his mind, the SEALs were where he could make that grand contribution."

Ray Dawson said his son first showed an interest in joining the military two years ago after listening to his grandfather tell stories from his days in the Navy.

"Before that he was kind of a regular teenager," he said. "But once he chose that, he got focused and became a man overnight."

BY MITCHELL FREEDMAN
Newsday Staff Writer

A security lockdown at rural Mattituck Junior/Senior High School on Friday was triggered by a student who, after being suspended for cutting class, made some threatening remarks as his parents questioned him about his actions, Southold Town Police said.

No specific threat was made against any individual and -- after interviewing the 16-year-old Friday afternoon -- police decided not to file charges against him. "We determined he had neither the means nor the inclination” to carry out any threat, Capt. Martin Flatley said.

But the boy's parents had notified the school of the threat on Thursday. School officials promptly notified police, then sent out a cautionary warning on their e-mail link across the rural North Fork district. Police declined to specify
the nature of the threat, characterizing it as more general than specific.

"In this day and age, any school system can't be too careful,” Superintendent James McKenna said Friday morning. "We know who the student is, we know where the student is today, so we're confident we have a handle on what is going on.” He said that in the post-Columbine era, it was important "to take any threat seriously.”

The e-mail notification told students and parents that students would not be allowed to leave the building Friday until dismissal time -- and said "backpacks may be searched.” McKenna said Friday that security measures were in place, including "increased security within the building.”

When the school opened Friday, attendance was off by about a third, McKenna said, though more students came in as the day went on. A precautionary security lockdown was in place, and a police car was idling in the driveway.

McKenna spent the morning outside the school talking to parents. "They were gracious. They understood what we were doing,” he said. "I was out there like a Wal-Mart greeter.”

Diane Schmidt, who came to pick up her daughter, Pamela, in the afternoon, said the e-mail notice seemed to make the rumor a little different. "A person could say something they don't mean ... but because of everything that is going on in the world, everyone is suspicious,” she said.

Pamela, 18, said the extra security at the school did not change anything she would have normally done, but said that just hearing there was an alert was "scary.”

In part, she said, it was that things happened so quickly, and that the word going around was not just a rumor that one person passed on to another, but one that everyone heard at the same time. "Usually, you're just talking and you hear a rumor,” she said.

Southold police were also at a Friday night school event -- a dance for students and faculty. To McKenna, the function represented a return to a kind of normalcy. "I have to be at the high school this evening ... and I have to practice,” he said.

BY GLENN THRUSH AND KEITH HERBERT
Newsday Staff Writers

WACO, Texas - Hillary Rodham Clinton released the the most controversial ad of the 2008 campaign Friday, a 30-second spot showing slumbering boys and girls she implies would be imperiled by Barack Obama's presidency.

"It's 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep," a male narrator says as the camera pans over boys and girls sleeping peacefully under the covers. "But there's a phone in the White House, and it's ringing. Something's happened in the world. Your vote will decide who answers the call."

Reminiscent of Lyndon B. Johnson's famous 1963 spot superimposing a mushroom cloud over a girl plucking a daisy, the spot makes no direct mention of the Illinois senator. But it ends with a bespectacled Clinton reaching for a handset under a lamp in a darkened room with the words: "Who do you want answering the phone?"

The ad -- the brainchild of embattled Clinton aides Mark Penn and Mandy Grunwald -- will run in Texas but Clinton aides didn't say how long it would air or how much they're spending on it.

Obama wasted little time responding, accusing Clinton of playing the fear card and releasing an updated Internet version of the same ad touting his opposition to the 2002 vote to invade Iraq.

"We've seen these ads before, trying to play on people's fears, trying to scare up votes," Obama told backers in Texas. "But I don't think they'll work this time. The question is not about who will be picking up the phone. The question is what kind of judgment will you exercise when you answer the phone."

Later, speaking in Waco, Clinton quipped, "I don't think people in Texas scare all that easily."

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe compared the ad to a 1984 Walter Mondale commercial showing a red hotline phone in the White House that was intended to portray his opponent Gary Hart as soft on defense.

"She had her red-phone moment in 2002," he said, referring to Clinton's initial Senate vote in favor of the war. "And she and George Bush and John McCain made the wrong decision."

In a conference call, Clinton aides dismissed the suggestion by reporters that the ad -- titled "Children" -- was comparable to LBJ's "Daisy" commercial, which was intended to suggest Republican Barry Goldwater was irresponsible enough to start a nuclear war.

"This is not at all like the ad -- it envisions basically the apocalypse, that is not what our ad does," said communications director Howard Wolfson.

"This is a positive ad, it has very soft images not at all like that ad," said top strategist Mark Penn, who conceived the idea behind the spot, according to the campaign. Penn dismissed questions about the ad's veracity given that Clinton has never held an official position in the executive branch.

The commercial repackages one of Clinton's oldest campaign themes -- her relative experience on national security -- in a way the campaign hopes will appeal to Lone Star State voters, who are more conservative on national security than Democrats on the coasts.

It comes at a time when Clinton is slipping behind Obama in Texas polls -- and as her advisers are starting to downplay expectations she'll win here and in Ohio, where she clings to a 7-point lead.

On Friday night Clinton's campaign announced that she will spend part of her pre-primary Monday evening appearing on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart.

As Clinton and Obama cris-crossed Texas Friday, officials with the Texas Democratic Party reported that Clinton's lawyers were planning a suit to stop the state's hybrid primary-caucus election, arguing that it was unfair to some voters. A Clinton spokesman said the campaign was only requesting clarification of rules, adding, "There was no threat of legal action veiled or overt."

Herbert reported from Waco, Thrush from Columbus, Ohio

BY ELLEN YAN AND JAMES BERNSTEIN
ellen.yan@newsday.com and james.bernstein@newsday.com

Northrop Grumman has snatched a $35 billion Air Force contract to build refueling planes in a surprise victory over Boeing, the company that has supplied such tankers for 50 years.

It's not clear what work, if any, will be done at Northrop Grumman's Bethpage facility, where about 2,200 workers focus on early warning and radar support equipment for the Navy.

But the first of up to 179 tanker aircraft, named the KC-45A, is expected to be delivered in about two years and will be able to refuel both Air Force and Navy planes, replacing aging refueling tankers that have to be fitted before take off for one or the other. The Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman and its partner in the competition, the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. of France, plan to do most of the tanker assembly work in Mobile, Ala., some frame work in Europe and the refueling systems at Northrop Grumman's new facilities in Bridgeport, W.Va.

"The tanker is the number one procurement priority for us right now," General Duncan McNabb, vice chief of staff for the Air Force, said Friday in announcing the bid winner. "Buying the new KC-45A is a major step forward and another demonstration of our commitment to recapitalizing our Eisenhower-era inventory of these critical national assets."

Northrop Grumman's facility in Bethpage might have provided some engineering expertise, but few jobs were expected to be created on Long Island out of the tanker deal, company officials privately acknowledged.

Ronald D. Sugar, Northrop Grumman chairman and chief executive officer, expects this new generation refueler to be a sort of multitasking aircraft. Not only will it be able to refuel two planes at once, the KC-45A will also have defensive systems that allow it to go into dangerous environments as well as carry cargo and passengers, including the wounded.

"Northrop Grumman's vast expertise in aerospace design, development and systems integration will ensure our nation's warfighters receive the most capable and versatile tanker ever built," Sugar said. "The Northrop Grumman KC-45A tanker will be a game changer."

Chicago-based Boeing, one of the world's largest manufacturers of commercial aircraft, had been widely expected to win the tanker contract. In bidding for the lucrative contract, Boeing painted its Northrop Grumman-EADS competition as a foreign intrusion into the U.S. defense market.

The work, to be done over a decade, will employ 25,000 workers at 230 U.S. companies, Northrop Grumman said.

The contract gives Northrop Grumman an opening to further future billions of dollars because the Air Force wants to replace its entire fleet of 600 refueling tankers. For EADS, the maker of Airbus planes, the victory is an entry into the lucrative U.S. military market.

Northrop Grumman is also competing for a $3.1 billion contract to build a new maritime patrol plane for the Navy, which calls the future aircraft Broad Area Maritime Surveillance, or BAMS.

Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing are the competitors for the BAMS contract. The contract is to be decided by March 5, according to industry sources.

BY TOM INCANTALUPO
Newsday Staff Writer

Be prepared, drivers, for $4-a-gallon gasoline this spring but don't bet the pink slip on it.

In purely mathematical terms, crude oil would have to rise to about $127 a barrel -- it settled Friday at $101.72 a barrel in New York futures trading after topping $103 overnight -- for the national average price of gasoline to rise to $4 from Friday's $3.164 a gallon, says James Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch & Associates in Galena, Ill., an oil trading advisory firm.

That kind of crude oil price increase seems unlikely, he says, by this summer's driving season, anyway. But it's hardly impossible; a major a new war or other international or natural disaster that interrupts supplies could sending oil soaring. "There is no ceiling and therein lies the problem," Ritterbusch said. "We are just in unchartered territory."

There might be a practical ceiling, experts said, if the oil markets were operating the old-fashioned way -- based on supply and demand. But, according to Ritterbusch and other experts, the markets of 2008 are different -- driven by concerns about supply interruptions in hotspots like Nigeria and Venezuela and, increasingly by investors lured to petroleum by the weakness of the dollar against foreign currencies. "There are a lot of geopolitical and economic developments out there that have simply outweighed the bearish fundamentals," Ritterbusch said.

In fact, Ritterbusch said, gasoline supplies in the United States are at a 14-year high -- and that demand is flat with or even lagging last year's, depending upon which statistics are used.

One reason for the cheap dollar, he said, is the lowering of interest rates by the Federal Reserve Bank -- actions intended to avoid or at least weaken a feared recession.

In fact, Friday's decline in crude oil prices -- 87 cents a barrel -- was attributed by analysts to a stabilization of the dollar against the euro. Bloomberg News reported that the dollar had declined to a record $1.5239 per euro earlier in the day, the lowest since the euro's inception in 1999, then rebounded to $1.5188.

It is unclear whether $4 a gallon will prove a psychological barrier for drivers, sparking significant cutbacks in driving and changes in vehicle choices. But if that barrier is to be breached this year, Long Island and other high-cost areas will arrive sooner; the average for regular here Friday was $3.301, according to the AAA. Premium averaged $3.607 and diesel was $3.864.

The highest average for regular gasoline on Long Island last year was $3.307 on May 28 -- despite predictions of $4 a gallon made by some analysts a year ago. The record high Long Island average for regular in the AAA survey was $3.347 on Sept. 11 of 2005, after Hurricane Katrina.

The Web site longislandgasprices.com, had motorist reports as high as $3.63 a gallon for regular -- at a Citgo station in Southampton.

It's an even shorter trip to $4 for drivers in San Francisco: the average there for regular yesterday was $3.596, the AAA said.

And for motorists who need midgrade or premium gas in Wailuku, Hawaii, $4 is already a memory: the higher octane fuels averaged $4.132 and $4.21 a gallon, respectively, Friday, the AAA said.

Regular was only $3.908.

BY JENNIFER SINCO KELLEHER
jennifer.kelleher@newsday.com

March 1, 2008

On Friday afternoon, the food service manager for Longwood schools and a Suffolk health official poured bleach over more than 100 cases of beef products and chucked them into a sealed garbage bin.

Cold Spring Harbor officials did the same with nine cases of beef patties and eight cases of beef meatballs on Wednesday.

Beef products sitting in freezers of Long Island school districts met similar fates over the past two weeks after the Agriculture Department issued the largest meat recall in U.S. history. The recall came after a covert investigation by the Humane Society of the United States exposed workers at a California slaughter plant forcing "downed" cows -- cattle too sick or injured to walk -- to stand to pass inspection.

Downed cows pose a greater risk of carrying bacteria because they are wallowing in feces, officials said.

The slaughter plant, Westland/Hallmark Meat Co., is the second-largest supplier of beef to schools nationwide. Since the findings came to light last month, schools have been scouring freezers and setting aside the company's products.

Last Sunday, the USDA announced those products would be recalled and should be destroyed. No beef went directly from Westland/Hallmark to Long Island and New York City schools, state officials said. However, the USDA instructed schools to destroy products from processors using Westland/Hallmark beef.

It is not known how many Island schools have the recalled processed beef products, although some food service directors noted much of the beef already would have been served.

As of Friday, officials from the state Office of General Services, which oversees the distribution of USDA commodities to schools, were collecting data from districts that reported having the recalled products. Spokesman Brad Maione said three cases were at Island Park, 22 at Plainedge, four at Sewanhaka and 14 at Nassau BOCES.

Whitson's Culinary Group, based in Islandia, handles food service for 18 Long Island school districts. Spokeswoman Holly Von Seggern said only Longwood, Hicksville and Kings Park were affected.

A spokeswoman from Aramark, which contracts with about 27 local districts, said four received the products in 2007 but no longer have them.

District officials in Sachem reported having several cases of the affected beef.

The USDA said the recalled products pose only a "remote possibility" of being harmful.

However, South Huntington banned all beef from school meals, a move other food service directors said is too drastic. "We are not serving any beef until we can verify in writing the origin of that beef and ensure its safety," South Huntington spokesman Steve Bartholomew said.

Island Park superintendent Edward Price said cafeteria workers substituted chicken this week as a precaution.

BY ANDREW STRICKLER
Newsday Staff Writer

A Lynbrook school janitor who police say left suggestive presents for a middle-school girl -- including a box of Valentine's chocolates and a $100 bill -- and suggested a date with another student has been charged with endangering the children, according to Nassau police.

Francisco Avila, a janitor at Lynbrook North Middle School on Merrick Road, was escorted out of the school by district officials early Tuesday after they were notified that he'd made improper advances on two students, Lynbrook district superintendent Philip Cicero said.

Avila, 43, was told not to report to work on Wednesday or Thursday, when police say he was arrested at his Uniondale home. He remained in a Nassau jail late Friday, said his wife, Patricia Avila. When asked Friday if there was any truth to the allegations, she replied: "I really don't know. This has come as a surprise to me." Attempts to reach the family's attorney were unsuccessful.

On three occasions, police said, Avila gave presents to a 13-year-old Lynbrook student. The first incident occurred in December, when Avila allegedly opened the girl's locker without permission and left her a key chain and other gifts, police said.

On Valentine's Day, Avila allegedly left the same girl a heart-shaped box of candies. The next day, police say he handed the girl a pack of gum containing a $100 bill and a note with his cell phone number.

Officials said Avila also exchanged text messages last month with a 14-year-old girl in which he suggested they go to a movie together.

"I think that they felt threatened, but I think they didn't know what to do because of their tender age," said Det. Lt. John Azzata of the Fifth Squad. One of the girls told an adult about the advances, who then notified the district. There was no physical contact between Avila and the girls, police said.

Eighth-grader Jasmine Cobb, 13, called the situation "scary."

"No one would have expected it. He was just friendly," said Cobb, who was not one of the victims. "He would always say 'Hi' to everyone."

Avila has worked in the school since January 2007 and passed a background check, Cicero said. There have been no previous complaints about Avila, Cicero said, and police said he has no criminal record.

"He's clearly suspended," Cicero said. "Our anticipation very absolutely is he won't be back working at Lynbrook." Cicero said parents of all 3,100 district students would be notified of Avila's arrest and the availability of counselors. Principal Shawn Robertson was to visit each classroom at the middle school Friday to speak with students.

Avila was arraigned Friday in First District Court in Hempstead on two counts of endangering the welfare of a child and is being held on $1,500 bail or $3,000 bond. A judge also issued orders of protection for both children.

Anastasia Economides contributed to this report.

BY DANIEL EDWARD ROSEN
Special to Newsday

The livery cabdriver who brought an abandoned baby to a Queens firehouse said Friday that the man who left the girl in his cab was "sad and nervous" because his wife had left him and that he wanted to give up the baby.

In an interview with Newsday outside his Elmhurst apartment, Tel-A-Car driver Klever Sailema, 45, said that the man who hailed his cab around 106th Street and Northern Boulevard in Corona on Thursday told him he was the father of the little girl he was carrying.

"He told me the mother left the baby like three to four days" ago, Sailema said. "He doesn't know where is the mother."

He said the father said he wanted to give up the baby, but didn't know whom to give it up to. "I saw the guy look sad and nervous," Sailema said.

After roughly 10 blocks, the man asked Sailema to pull over so he could use a pay phone. He left the baby in the cab and crossed the street to a phone, but Sailema lost sight of him because of traffic. After the traffic cleared, he saw the father had left. He waited five minutes but realized his passenger would not return.

"I'm thinking, 'What am I going to do with the baby?'" he said. When the baby began crying, the firehouse was the first thing that came to his mind.

Sailema buckled her in and drove her to nearby Engine Company 289 and Ladder Company 138 in Corona. EMS personnel then brought the baby to St. John's Queens Hospital. The baby -- nicknamed Lourdes by hospital staff -- is about 6 or 7 months old and is in excellent condition.

"I treat her like she were my child," Sailema, who has an 8-year-old daughter, said later at a news conference.

Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Friday that they had "no investigative theory" as to why Lourdes was abandoned. "We need some help," he said.

Lourdes will be placed in foster care for six months. If she is not reclaimed, a family on an Administration for Children's Services waiting list will be able to adopt her. "There are people already in the pipeline," said ACS communications director Sharman Stein.

Lourdes' biological guardians would have to petition to reclaim her, Stein said.

Sailema, an Ecuadorean immigrant who has been in the United States for 20 years, said at the conference, "I tell my daughter the value of what it is to have a mother and father."

The New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers will award Sailema $300, president Fernando Mateo said. He will also be named driver of the year by the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission.

But the freshly anointed hero is wary of his new fame. "I never think that I'm going to be in the news or anything," Sailema said. "I don't want that."