Cops: Woman Left Kids for Internet Fling

A California woman is charged with child endangerment for allegedly abandoning her 4- and 7-year-old children for three weeks and going on a 3,000-mile trip to visit a man she met on the Internet.

Janet Chen, 31, faces two felony counts of child abuse and neglect, or endangerment causing great bodily harm, after her son, 4, and daughter, 7, were found abandoned in Orange County, Calif., on Monday, authorities said.

She faces as much as seven years and eight months in prison, The Associated Press reported.

Neighbors’ Suspicions

Neighbors in Chen's Placentia, Calif., apartment complex said they became suspicious when they saw delivery notices on Chen's door.

"They had been there for at least a week, a week and a half, which meant the door hadn't been opened," Mindy Jedry, a neighbor, told ABCNEWS.

Jedrey's husband, Charles, called 911.

"I had physically seen the children pulling the blinds aside," Charles Jedrey said on the 911 recording. "And my wife said she heard them in there crying."

Police found the children huddled in a back room. The phone had been unplugged and the cable television service had been disconnected. The food their mother left for them had run out.

"She bought them TV dinners, corn dogs, bagel bites, finger-food-type things, and the children were instructed to use only the microwave," said Detective Corinne Loomis of the Placentia Police Department.

The daughter told police her mother said she was traveling to China for 20 days, The Associated Press reported.

Chen told police she had traveled to North Carolina to meet a man she'd contacted on the Internet. The romance did not work out.

7-Year-Old in Charge

Chen, who was arrested when she returned home, is scheduled to be arraigned Jan. 23, and her bail has been set at $50,000.

Neighbors credit Chen's daughter with "a maturity beyond her years."

"The little girl took care of her brother incredibly — you know, bathed him, fed him," Loomis said.