Kidnapping victim-turned-police recruit reunited with cops who saved him at NYPD ceremony

A child kidnapping victim who has grown up to become an NYPD recruit was reunited at a department ceremony Thursday with the two retired cops who tracked down his creepy abductor — and whose heroic work inspired him to join the force.

Stephen Johnson, 30, wiped away tears and embraced former detectives Richard O’Brien and James Rice —  who comforted him in the wake of the crime and then busted his abductor — when they surprised him with well-wishes at the department’s Gun & Shield Day ceremony.

Johnson— who was snatched from a Chelsea playground as a 4-year-old by convicted child molester  Tony Sanchez — said he was inspired to join the force by the detectives, who also helped return him to his mom when he was a scared little boy.

“They actually made me feel comfortable, which I wasn’t expecting from anybody at that time,” Johnson said — before turning to the officers and saying “Thank you.”

“It made me have somebody to look up to at a time when I was experiencing a traumatic event. Somebody was able to make me feel calm and that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to be a police officer,” Johnson said at the ceremony, which marks the end of rigorous Police Academy training.

“We’re proud of you,” O’Brien told the soon-to-be newly minted cop during the teary reunion.

Johnson had been playing at the Chelsea Park playground Oct. 23, 1999 when his mother, Michelle Montes,  looked away for a minute — and the boy vanished.

Sanchez, a 39-year-old parks maintenance man, had carried him off in that split second. 

“He came up to me, and he actually grabbed me and took me out of the park. He took me on a train away from my family, and he took me to the Bronx,” Johnson recalled of the terrifying ordeal.

Sanchez took the boy to a pizzeria, put him in pajamas and slept next to him in his underwear but didn’t molest him,  police told The Post at the time.

A citywide hunt for the child quickly unfolded as Montes recounted the mother’s-worst-nightmare tale to The Post and other outlets— prompting a media storm that ended up spooking Sanchez.

When the abductor saw the missing boy on the news, he got scared and left the child at a Bronx Subway station the next morning. He was soon later rescued.

Johnson recalled the bizarre moment of seeing himself on the news while he was kidnapped.

“I was able to see myself on the news and see my mother on the news. And I was complaining and saying I wanted to go home, and he actually dropped me off at a train station at Jerome Avenue in the Bronx, where he told the token agent that he had found a missing kid,” he said.

Rice and O’Brien helped reunite him with his mom at a hospital and got him to open up about what happened in order to crack the case.

Sanchez, who had previously pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a 7-year-old-boy and 5 year old girl in 1994, was soon charged with kidnapping and endangering the welfare of a minor.

“[They] were very positive and caring and made me have a better lookout,” Johnson said. “I want to be a policeman for the community and take care of everyone and make them feel as cared for as I did that day.” 

O’Brien, who is now retired, said he’ll never forget the kidnapping — or its rare happy ending.

“When the officers brought him into St. Vincent’s Hospital…there wasn’t a dry eye in the emergency room when he went to his mother,” he  recalled. “That’s the thing I remember the most.”

“I’m so proud of him to see that he’s come to this to be a police officer,” he said.

Johnson was one of dozens of recruits who were honored at the ceremony Thursday.