Sweeten will be extradited to Bucks County, where she faces charges of making a false report and identity theft, both misdemeanors. The investigation is continuing into possible theft charges, said Bucks County District Attorney Michelle Henry. Julia Rakoczy’s biological father, Anthony Rakoczy, of Feasterville, will go to Florida today to pick her up, Henry said.

Over the last week, Sweeten withdrew $12,000 from several bank accounts and used a coworker’s driver’s license to travel, Henry said. Authorities could not say why Sweeten fled her home – leaving behind a husband and two other children, including an infant daughter. Before leaving, Sweeten called her husband, Richard, and told him to pass along her love to her other children in case she never saw them again, Henry said. “Right now, I don’t think anyone is in a position to discuss possible motives until we have talked to her,” said FBI spokesman J.J. Klaver.

The efforts to track down Sweeten – which included an Amber Alert and massive local and national media coverage – began when she told a Philadelphia 911 dispatcher about 1:45 p.m. Tuesday that she had been abducted by two black males and stuffed into the trunk of a Cadillac.

Authorities said she made several calls in which she claimed the men had kidnapped her after a minor accident at a busy intersection on Street Road in Upper Southampton.

Several calls were cut off, but Sweeten spoke at least twice with a Philadelphia dispatcher. In the calls, Sweeten indicated that her daughter was with her, but the girl’s voice could not be heard, said Lt. Frank Vanore, a Philadelphia Police Department spokesman. Police who responded to the Street Road scene found nothing to indicate an accident or a struggle.

Authorities nevertheless issued an Amber Alert for the child and began a search over two counties. Though police initially treated the case as they do most reported kidnappings – approaching it with an open mind and considering a range of possibilities, including a hoax or a custody dispute – officers found Sweeten’s 911 call especially convincing. “It was chilling,” said a person involved in the case.

By yesterday, the investigation began to yield evidence that indicated that the abduction might not have happened. Vanore disclosed yesterday that Sweeten’s calls to 911 were picked up by a cell-phone tower near 12th and Walnut Streets in Center City. Furthermore, Sweeten’s GMC Yukon Denali was found at 15th and Chestnut Streets about 1:30 a.m. yesterday with a parking ticket on the windshield. The Denali had no damage that would indicate it had been involved in an accident.

Authorities also reported yesterday that about an hour after the alleged kidnapping, Sweeten and her daughter had been captured on video surveillance at Philadelphia International Airport. She used cash and a coworker’s borrowed ID to buy two one-way tickets to Orlando for her and her daughter, authorities said.

Henry said Sweeten told the coworker that she needed the driver’s license to straighten out a pension issue. Investigators also said they had heard multiple allegations that Sweeten was in financial distress, another reason to consider her claim of kidnapping a hoax.

Sweeten, a Bensalem High School graduate, listed her profession in court records as a trained paralegal. Sweeten married Anthony Rakoczy in 1992, and they had two daughters, Paige, 15, and Julia. The couple divorced amicably in 2003, and she married Richard Sweeten in 2005. He owns a landscaping business, and the couple live on a cul-de-sac in Feasterville and have an 8-month-old daughter, Faith. Paige Rakoczy was in school at the time her mother made the 911 calls.

The baby was in day care, Henry said. Neighbor Fred Goodson said he became good friends with the Sweetens when both families moved into the neighborhood around the same time 21/2 years ago. He called Bonnie Sweeten “a great, great lady” who kept a list of birthdays for all the children in the neighborhood and never failed to buy them presents.

He described Julia Rakoczy as “a little spark plug” who organized events for children in the neighborhood, including an Earth Day celebration. “It’s hard for me to see her on that TV screen,” Goodson said yesterday before news broke that Sweeten and Julia had been found in Florida. “She’s a sweet little girl. It’s a shock to us.” Another neighbor, Sean Tchourumoff, whose daughter is friends with Julia, said the little girl split her time between her parents. He said he had noticed that she seemed to be under some stress, but he attributed that to the normal strains of having divorced parents.

Julia had been attending Belmont Elementary School in Bensalem, but she was withdrawn on May 1, a Bensalem School District spokeswoman said. Julia and her sister Paige then enrolled in the Neshaminy School District, said Louis T. Muenker, district superintendent. Muenker declined to identify which schools the sisters attended. Crisis-intervention teams were sent to district schools yesterday, Muenker said, when Julia was still believed to have been kidnapped.

Why the Smartest People Have the Toughest Time Dating

Black Woman, White Skin

Her parents were black, but she looks white. Kenosha Robinson on trying to figure out where she fits in.

Kenosha Robinson

By Casey Parks

Growing up in Jackson, MS, I gravitated toward white people. It felt natural, I suppose, because I looked like them. While my cousins got black baby dolls for Christmas, mine were always peaches and cream. Once, during playtime in elementary school, one of the black girls told me I couldn’t join her group. My doll, she said, was the wrong color.

Later, I understood what she meant was that I was the wrong color. Like my doll, I was blonde and green-eyed-the only one in a mass of brown skin. I am African-American, born with a genetic abnormality called albinism, meaning I’ve got little to no pigment in my skin.

Albinism is a recessive trait, so both parents must carry the gene in order to conceive a child with it. It’s more common than you’d think-one in 17,000 children is born with albinism. My mom was only 16 when I was born.

She did her best to protect me, but I knew early on that I was different. Everywhere we went-the mall, the grocery store-people stared at me. You could see the question on their faces: “Is she really yours?” My dad died from pneumonia when I was 7. Mostly what I remember about him is the way he stood up for me. One day I asked him, “Why do people always look at me?” He said, “It’s because you’re so beautiful.”

But some of my extended family were less charitable. Most of my relatives are from the Mississippi Delta, where blacks and whites still live separately. The notion of forming a friendship with a white person is foreign to my relatives, so how were they supposed to treat me? The only way, it seemed, was by singling me out and teasing me.

“White girl!” they’d call me. I felt like I was a betrayal to my race. My mom had more practical fears, like whether I’d get sun damage if she let me go outside. The complete absence of melanin in my skin means I don’t tan-I just burn, baby, burn.

Any time I went to a family reunion or church picnic, she’d slather me with sunscreen and make me wear a hat. During recess, I had to sit in the shade. When I was in fourth grade, my mom wrote a note to excuse me from field day, but I didn’t give it to my teacher. Instead, I played all day under the hot sun. When I got in the car after school, my mother noticed that my face was red.

I tried to lie my way through it, but my face kept getting redder, and my body started blistering. I didn’t go to school for a week because I was so sick. My health issues pretty much guaranteed I’d never be one of the cool kids. I hated having to wear a hat. And more than anything, I hated the questions I got about my eyes. When someone is born with albinism, they are usually declared legally blind. Though I can see, I have nystagmus, which causes my eyes to shift rapidly from side to side in order to find a focal point.

Whenever I meet someone new, I count the minutes before they ask, “What’s wrong with your eyes?” But health issues can’t compare with the struggles I’ve faced with my self-esteem. As a teenager, while classmates were griping about acne and getting their periods, I was facing a different kind of crisis: Who was I? Was I a white girl with black parents? Or a black girl living inside a white girl’s body?

Mississippi, of course, has a tense racial past. Though the KKK is no longer in full force, white supremacist Jim Giles ran for Congress with a vocal (if unsuccessful) anti-black campaign in 2004 and 2006. Blacks and whites rarely mix. In a weird way, I felt I was the uncomfortable meeting point between these two groups. In high school, I earned the respect of my white friends for my smarts and quick wit. They elected me class president. But they also excluded me socially.

When I’d ask, “What are you doing this weekend?” they’d brush me off, coming up with some bogus errand they had to do. Other times, they were openly rude, making plans for weekend get-togethers in front of me-but never actually inviting me along. My black friends were similarly respectful at school, while shying away from me at the skating rink or the mall, especially when boys came along.

As for the prom, forget it. That was a nightmare waiting to happen. A black guy might take a white girl to the prom, but taking the black girl who looked white was another story. One day in class, the cool black guys asked me who was taking me. I said, with shaky confidence, that I was going alone. I heard one of them snicker, “That’s because no one’s gonna take her!” In the end, I stayed home.

Looking back, I can’t believe I was too intimidated to go to my prom. At a certain point, it occurred to me that I needed to “pick” my race-life would be easier if I aligned myself with a side, rather than constantly explaining myself to both. I chose the blacks. We share a heritage, and in Mississippi, there is real pride within the black community.

Still, I felt the need to prove my “blackness.” I started speaking slang. I began listening to rap. I thought knowing the words to songs about gold teeth, money, women, and cars would make me sufficiently ghetto. Despite my efforts, I was still mistaken for a white girl. So I established myself with an entirely different group-the class clowns. I ridiculed myself as a way of pre-empting comments from others, joking about “not being too white to whup your butt!”

Other times, I kidded about being just white enough to “claim kidnapping” if my black friends and I ever got pulled over for speeding. But underneath, it was the same old story: I was actually afraid to look at myself in the mirror. When it came time to choose a college, I considered attending a predominantly black university. “That’s what I am,” I told my mom.

But she was hesitant, and in the end, so was I. Instead, I chose Millsaps, a mostly white, liberal-arts college in Jackson, where I’m now a junior. Here, in the cafeteria, racial segregation lives on: Blacks and whites almost never eat at the same table. A few months ago, some black students showed up at a white fraternity party. They were turned away and told that they were a bunch of . . . well, you can imagine what they were called. Even though no one would ever call me those names, I was still furious.

My loyalty is to the black community. I will never set foot in that frat house again. It was then that I started reclaiming my identity through weave-a traditional African hairstyle. I change it once a week, creating a new identity with each look. It gives me satisfaction to know that while I cannot alter my skin color, my hair is mine to play with.

My self-esteem is a work in progress. Sometimes, I’ll be talking with a black friend, then look down at my skin and feel totally exposed, like, “I’m white and everyone can see it.” But I’m becoming stronger and learning it’s OK to just be Nosha, all 150 pounds of smile and laughter that I am. Still, seeing girls with beautiful caramel or chocolate skin sparks envy in me. The last boyfriend I had made me feel special-in a good way-about my albinism. The uniqueness drove him crazy, and that gave me a lot of confidence.

The man I marry will have to be intrigued, too. I probably want to marry a black man-even though I know it will be strange to have children who are a different color than I am-and I’d want him to be tested for the gene. Although I’m happy with who I am today, I wouldn’t wish what I’ve gone through on anyone.

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