EL MORRO - The parents of a three-year-old faced the nightmare of any mom and dad Sunday near El Morro National Monument.

John and Tracy Valdez were having a picnic with their toddler son Joshua when the child disappeared.

“One minute I was packing up the food to put back in the car and the next minute I couldn’t find my son,” Tracy said. “Naturally I panicked and started calling his name and running around in circles.”

John had been near the picnic site looking at birds through his binoculars and came running when he heard his wife calling for their son. “I could hear the fear in her voice,” he recalled.

The couple immediately mounted a search of the area. “There really weren’t any other people around so we didn’t think he had been kidnapped,” Tracy said. “We thought maybe he had wandered off and then fallen over some rocks.”

After a half hour of searching, John and Tracy were considering going to the ranger station for help. “We thought we needed more people to fan out in a search,” John related.

Just as John was getting into the car to go for help, leaving Tracy at the scene in case Joshua wandered back, the couple heard a faint crying sound. “I knew it wasn’t Joshua, but I couldn’t tell if the sound was coming from a child or animal,” Tracy said.

The couple began to follow the faint sound and hiked about a quarter of mile when they came upon an incredible sight. Joshua was sitting on the ground playing with three coyote pups.

Weak with relief, Tracy picked up the child and whisked him away from the playful animals. “We weren’t worried that the pups would hurt Joshua, but we knew that the mother coyote would probably attack him if she returned to her pups…it’s a natural phenomenon,” she said.

Concerned that their son may have been exposed to some wildlife disease, the couple took Joshua to the hospital in Gallup to be checked out. When the tot was declared healthy, Tracy and John breathed their last sigh of relief.

The family was en route from Los Angeles to Kansas City when they took a detour to visit the Zuni Mountains.

“My son absolutely loves dogs so I think he thought the coyote pups were just like his Golden Retriever puppy at home. He couldn’t understand why Tracy and I were so upset,” John said.

The family is now en route to Kansas City.

By Diane Fowler