Brave

Hero Bakery Owner Gets Sweet
Rewards

The lines at Mini’s Cupcakes in Salt Lake City have
been out the door since last Thursday because the
store’s owner, Leslie Fiet , is being hailed as a
hero.
Fiet, 44, was in her bakery's kitchen prepping
Valentine’s Day treats on Feb. 4, when, at around
5 p.m., she saw an Amber Alert flash on her
cellphone.
Fiet, a mother of two sons, said the alert caught
her eye because it indicated the child in danger
was in a black SUV. Fiet remembered seeing black
SUV parked outside her shop and assumed it was
a customer at the framing store next door.
“After I got the message I looked out my door and
saw the SUV but there was no license plate on the
front,” Fiet, who opened Mini's in 2007, told ABC
News. "I went to the other side and saw the
license plate and thought, ‘Oh my hell.’”
Sitting inside the black SUV was the focus of the
Amber Alert, 3-year-old Bella Martinez. Bella had
been left sleeping inside the car by her father,
Pedro Martinez, around 3 p.m., that day while he
went into a convenience store located about 25
blocks away from the cupcake shop, according to
police.
A woman who approached Martinez for a cigarette
at the convenience store got inside his car and
drove off with Bella as soon as Martinez was
inside the store, Salt Lake South Police
Department executive officer Gary Keller told ABC
News.
Fiet said when she saw Bella inside the car
through an open window, she knew she had to
act.
“My initial thought was to call 911 but then I
looked closer and saw Bella was in a tremendous
amount of stress, hyperventilating and crying," Fiet
said. "I just dropped my phone and ran out the
door.”
PHOTO: Cupcake store owner Leslie Fiet is being
hailed as a hero after rescuing 3-year-old Bella
Martinez.
“My thought was just to get her out of the car,”
she said. “As I’m diving through the open window
I thought, ‘Please don’t shoot me,’ and then I
thought, ‘Well if they drive off I’ll be hanging out
the window and someone will call 911.’”
Luckily for Fiet and Bella, the suspect, identified by
police as 24-year-old Rosealee Maria Key, had
already abandoned the SUV.
In a span of what Fiet estimates to be about 30
seconds, she got Bella out of the SUV and safely
inside the cupcake shop. Fiet locked the door, only
allowing a customer she knew, who was also a
nurse, in to help her.
While the customer called 911, Fiet says she read
Bella books and gave her a stuffed animal to hold
on to.
“I thought about giving her a cupcake but with so
many allergies now –- gluten free, dairy free -- I
didn’t dare give her any food,” Fiet said.
When a plain-clothed police officer happened to
walk by, Fiet let him in, but only after verifying his
badge number with the 911 operator.
“He was calling out the number through the
window,” she said.
Nearly 45 minutes later, Bella’s parents arrived at
Fiet’s store, accompanied by the police chief and
their extended family, who had all been out
searching for Bella on their own.
PHOTO: Cupcake store owner Leslie Fiet is being
hailed a hero after rescuing 3-year-old Bella
Martinez. Mini's Cupcakes, pictured here in a
photo posted to Instagram on Jan. 16, 2015, was
recently burglarized.
“It was a whole lot of thank you’s and hugs,” Fiet
said of the meeting. “I don’t think you can even
talk at that point.”
“The relief of knowing your child is safe and that
nothing has happened to her, what else can you
say? You’re just in tears,” she said.
Fiat went home around 8:30 that night and came
back to her bakery early the next morning,
thinking it would be a normal work day.
“I’m getting lines and lines and I can’t bake and
frost fast enough and I’m like, ‘What is going
on?,’” Fiet said. “Then someone said, ‘They said
what you did on the radio and said to come down
and support you.”
So many people came to support Fiet's shop that
some of her friends took the day off from their own
jobs to help her man the crowds. On Thursday
night, a local talk radio show broadcast live from
Mini's Cupcakes, keeping the store open well past
its usual 6 p.m. closing time.
In addition to the new customers, flowers, cards
and thank you notes have been pouring in from
complete strangers, according to Fiet.
“People are saying hero which makes me
uncomfortable because I don’t feel that way,” she
said. “I think of a hero as a firefighter running into
a building. I think I have more of an attitude that
I’m grateful to have been in a position to be there
for Bella..”
One gift that Fiet has not removed from herself is
the one given to her by Bella’s father when he and
Bella’s family returned to Mini’s Cupcakes on
Friday to say thank you again.
“Bella’s parents gave me a beautiful charm
necklace with the date of her abduction and angel
wings,” Fiet said. “Her dad put it on me and I
haven’t taken it off.”
The suspect in the case turned herself into
authorities on Feb. 4. She was arrested by police
and charged with unauthorized use of a vehicle
and child endangerment, authorities told ABC
News.