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The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Saturday, November 23, 2002

Abandoned children will return to mother

Advertiser Staff

A 24-year-old woman charged with abandoning her three children last month at Honolulu International Airport pleaded no contest yesterday.

Nikki Cliff-Vasquez will be reunited with her children, who have been in foster care, and will be required to pursue mental health evaluations and treatment over the next year, said Jim Fulton of the prosecutor's office. She will be required to submit to substance abuse assessments and receive treatment as necessary.

She will also be allowed to accompany her husband, who is in the Army, to his next assignment in New York.

If she completes conditions of her probation, Fulton said, the charges against her will be dismissed.

Cliff-Vasquez and her husband and children will be close to other family members at their new assignment, Fulton said. At the time of the abandonment, Cliff-Vasquez's husband was in Germany and she was working two jobs and attending school while attempting to care for the children.

On Oct. 13, she took her 8-year-old daughter and 4- and 6-year-old sons to the airport and left them there.

Until she changed her plea yesterday, Cliff-Vasquez had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.