Kidnap surge alarms Valley police
Gary Grado

Lori Tapia and two of her employees laid bound on the bathroom floor of her Chandler restaurant with two instructions: Don’t go into the dining room and don’t call the police.

Outside in a car traveling Valley streets, her husband, Martin, lay on the rear floorboard under watch by four captors. They kept a hood over his head and a pistol pressed against his ribs.

The Gilbert couple, who had left teaching careers to open their restaurant, on Feb. 25 suddenly became part of a dangerous and burgeoning trend that has come to the Valley with the influx of illegal immigrants from Mexico.

Martin Tapia, like hundreds of others, was snatched by cells of kidnappers and held for ransom — a practice that has been less publicized than ones in which competing bands of human smugglers snatch each other’s cargo or hold hostages in drop houses to leverage higher fees.

“We were just third-party victims of a world we don’t belong in,â€