MARYSVILLE – Gretchen Jacobson is still upset today after finding a toddler crying for his mother Monday in an alley near the daycare where he went missing for an unknown amount of time.

Despite the incident, the Marysville Daycare and Learning Center was still operating today, and children were being taken to their respective schools in the daycare’s buses, as usual.

A phone call this morning to the daycare went unanswered.

Jacobson, a waitress at nearby Cristiano’s Restaurant, found the 20-month-old boy.

“He was hanging out by a door, and I asked him, “Where’s your mommy?'” Jacobson said.

He pointed to a door, so she asked inside that business, but no one knew who the child was.

Jacobson, who oversees the worship team at Calvary Arlington, took him inside the restaurant and called 911.

Marysville police arrived and could not locate a parent. Cmdr. Robb Lamoureaux said officers checked the daycare, which shares the same complex with Cristiano’s.

“They asked them to do a head check, and the employees came back one toddler short,” Lamoureaux said. “Unbeknownst to them, the child had gone out a fire escape.”

Jacobson said that couldn’t have happened.

“There’s no way he could open that steel door,” she said. Even though it has no lock, “the door’s too heavy.”

Jacobson said the boy must have escaped from the daycare’s playground.

“He had no coat, and his nose was running so bad,” she said.

The boy was reunited with his mother, who was “very upset” and “could not understand how something like that would happen,” Lamoureaux said.

Jacobson said restaurant employees have found needles and waste in that alley.

She was still mad at the daycare today.

“The lady at the daycare did not seem shocked,” Jacobson said. “It’s totally unacceptable.”