The same thing happened to me!
I was traveling through JFK with my infant son and my daughter, who’d just turned two. It was a Red Eye flight, so there weren’t a lot of people and the lights were dimmed.
We arrived at our gate and I stopped to change my son’s wet diaper. It took less than 30 seconds. I turned around and my daughter was just gone. I’m standing there, holding my baby, and had NO friggin’ clue which direction to go, so I did the only thing that I could do.
I started screaming my head off that my daughter was missing. And I mean screaming. The 20 or so people at the terminal started scrambling, running left and right, then someone bellowed, “THERE SHE IS!”
She was coming down the escalator, holding a young man’s hand, calm as a cucumber. He said that saw a little girl step off the escalator, then heard the commotion, and put two and two together.
I still wish I could find that guy and buy him a beer. My hero.
She’s a new mom now I just just keep thinking, “Let the games begin.”
Similar thing happened to me. Scariest moments of my life. My wife and her sister and my two sons...one being 4 years old. We were at the zoo and we went into the reptile house - a dimly lit building with a lot of large wall to wall glass enclosures for the snakes etc... Each of us thought the other had the younger son. When we came out we missed him. Each of us ran off in separate directions. I guess you could say I panicked as I ran and prayed. My wife ran to the zoo exit to cut off anybody who might be leaving with him and there is where she found him - sitting in the security area. They said a man had found him and brought him there. Whew! Lesson learned.