SAN ANTONIO — A pair of local grandparents got a phone call stating their granddaughter had been kidnapped.
The callers demanded a $10,000 ransom for her return.
Those grandparents are anonymously sharing their story with KENS 5 after they almost forked over some of the cash. They hope to prevent others from experiencing a similar situation.
December 23, the grandparents were on the way to have lunch with their granddaughter. At around 1:30 p.m., the grandmother's phone started to ring.
"I got a phone call saying, 'This is an officer' -- who identified me by name, by the way. 'Your family member has been injured in an accident.' I immediately started saying, Who is it? Who is it?" the grandmother recalled.
Her husband grabbed the phone to listen for himself.
"This person had told us a few seconds beforehand that 'I'm a member of the Sinaloa cartel and we have your granddaughter. She has witnessed a drug deal and has seen the drugs and the guns,'" said the grandfather.
He was told the only way to get his granddaughter back safely is to bring money to the Walmart off Blanco and Wurzbach Parkway alone.
"A young woman was screaming hysterically and crying in the background. I believed it," said the grandfather. "The caller said, 'If you don't obey my commands or everything I tell you as I tell you, I'm going to take your granddaughter to Mexico and you'll never see her again.'"
He dropped his wife at home. She immediately called police to check if her granddaughter was involved in any accidents nearby.
As the grandfather made his way to the Walmart, he remained on the phone and was ordered not to hang up.
"Here I am in a communications vacuum," said the grandfather. "I can't call anybody. I can't seek help. I can't verify that everybody's okay or anybody's okay, for that matter."
The caller told him to describe the streets he was driving on, the intersections he passed and the cars he was driving behind.
He says the caller told him that because the alleged drug deal didn't go through, he'd have to cover their losses of $10,000.
"I said, 'Well, I don't have anywhere near that kind of money.' He said, 'Well, how much do you have?' 'Well, I've only got a couple of hundred dollars.'"
Moments later, while trying to count money while maneuvering through holiday traffic, the grandfather dropped the phone and lost the call.
"The immediate thought that went through my mind is, oh my God, I just killed my granddaughter."
He called the number back. It didn't work.
Then, his phone rang. It was his granddaughter.
"My grandpa answers. I'm like, 'Hey, we're here. We'll just go inside. Do you want to us to get a table?' And he was like, 'Well, I'm on the line with someone else that says they have you captive.' And I was like, 'What?'" said the granddaughter, who was told to stay at the restaurant and call her grandmother to let her know she was okay.
After checking on other members of the family to make sure everyone was safe, the grandparents shared their story with police and filed a report. The entire ordeal happened in less than 30 minutes.
"The most frightening thing about this [scheme] was that they had someone in there in San Antonio on the ground ready to meet [my grandparents]," said the granddaughter.
Perhaps dropping the phone was divine intervention, the grandmother said.
"It could have been a real tragedy," she said. "I know that my husband has a concealed carry. He's former military...It could have ended in a shootout or something. That was my main concern. Thank God we dodged that bullet."
"If we weren't going to meet back up that day, I would have never called probably at that time," said the granddaughter.
She wanted to spread the word as soon as possible, so she shared her grandparents' experience on social media. The feedback she received was eye-opening.
"I looked back at my phone an hour or so later, and I had so many messages of friends that it had happened to in one way or another," she explained. "One of my friends...they had called her and even were a little bit more aggressive, saying, we've got your grandson and we've got a gun to his head."
The granddaughter's message to the criminals who are preying on the innocent: Be frightened.
"You're messing with the wrong people, especially in Texas," she said.
The Schertz Police Department calls this a virtual kidnapping ransom scam. Wednesday, the department shared how these types of calls are on the rise in our area. They note, if you get a similar call, remember that most cell phones will allow you to text while you're on an active call.
The FBI also shared tips on how families can prepare for these phone calls. Learn how many of these criminals find their prey here.