On the afternoon of November 13, 2019, something about the house on the property in El Paso County, Colorado, did not sit right with officer Landon from the first moment she saw it.
The place looked ordinary enough from the outside, the kind of home that might belong to any small family business trying to pass as calm and tidy and harmless.
But the call that had brought her there was anything but ordinary. A welfare check at Play Mountain Place daycare center had come in after a tip that its owner, Carla Marie Faith, was taking in more children than her license allowed and hiding them from view.
That alone was serious. But the details were already getting stranger by the minute. Parents had begun asking questions.
Licensing officials were already uneasy. And one mother had already confirmed she had dropped her child off there that morning.
So if Carla insisted there were no children on the property, what exactly was she hiding, and why did the whole scene feel like it was holding its breath?
The first task was supposed to be simple. Verify the claim. Check the property. Make sure the children were safe.
In theory, this was the kind of assignment that lived somewhere between paperwork and routine compliance.
In reality, the moment officer Landon arrived with licensing officials, it started to feel like something else entirely.
The people on scene could hear music coming from somewhere inside. They could not immediately find children in plain sight.
They could not get a straight answer from Carla. And the more questions they asked, the less sense the situation made.
At first, the front of the house looked nearly empty. No obvious sign of a bustling daycare.
No tiny shoes scattered by the door. No little voices drifting through the air. Just a strange stillness broken by the sound of music somewhere inside.
The licensing officials were already uneasy because Carla had told them no children were present that day.
That should have made the matter straightforward. If there were no children, then there were no children.
But that was not what the parents said. One had called ahead. One had expected to retrieve a toddler.
Another was trying to make sense of a setup that seemed to change every time someone looked at it.
The problem was not merely that Carla had a license with strict limits. Her license allowed no more than two children under the age of two and a total of six children in all at that location.
Yet the tip that triggered the welfare check suggested there were far more than that.
Even more troubling, there were reports that another home tied to Carla had also been used for unlicensed care.
Licensing staff had reason to believe she was running more than one operation while telling different people different things.
On paper, the violations were administrative. On the ground, the concern was much sharper. Where were the children right now?
Officer Landon and the licensing officials started asking the most basic questions and getting the least satisfying answers.
Was there anyone inside? Who was on the property? Had the children been taken somewhere else?
Was the building empty, or was someone simply refusing to answer? Carla’s words shifted. Then shifted again.
The front door remained quiet. A camera watched from somewhere on the property. The music kept playing.
Every minute that passed made the place seem less like a daycare and more like a stage set designed to hide something just out of sight.
When officers asked where the children were, Carla did not give a clear answer. Instead, she seemed nervous, evasive, and eager to redirect.
That made matters worse, not better. A parent had requested the welfare check because she believed her child was there.
Another parent had intended to pick up a toddler who had been dropped off that morning.
The daycare owner’s claim that no children were present did not fit with what the parents were saying, and the contradiction was beginning to look deliberate.
As the officers tried to make sense of it, more strange details emerged. One official had seen Carla leave and then appear to be picked up by another car, which made no sense with the story she had been telling.
There was confusion over the vehicle itself. It was later identified as a Camaro, though at the time it had been mistaken for a Mustang.
That small detail mattered because it added to the sense that Carla was slipping around the scene, appearing and disappearing just often enough to make everyone second-guess what they had seen.
She had not just been inconsistent. She had been hard to pin down. Then Mark Spain appeared in the back.
He said he was Carla’s employee. He had just dropped her off, he said. He did not seem to know exactly where the children were, but when pressed, he gave the same address the officers were already at, as though the answer itself might somehow quiet the concern.
It did not. Officer Landon asked where the children were supposed to be. Mark said he did not think there were any right now, then seemed to realize he was not helping himself by speaking in half-answers.
The officers were not interested in whether anyone had been late to work or who had taken which car.
They wanted the children accounted for. Until they were, no one was going anywhere. The tension on scene thickened.
The licensing officials were still trying to handle the administrative side of the situation, but officer Landon knew the center of gravity had shifted.
If children were inside, they needed to be seen. If children were elsewhere, they needed to be located.
And if the adults on the property were hiding information, then the officers might be walking into something far more serious than a licensing violation.
Carla kept insisting there was no need for alarm. She seemed to want the officers to believe the children were elsewhere, maybe at a park, maybe already in the care of someone else, maybe not on the property at all.
But those explanations were not matching what people on scene could hear and see. Music was still coming from somewhere.
The officers were still uncertain about the layout of the property. And a second house sat there too, attached to the same property, adding another layer to an already confusing setup.
It was not enough to search one building if there were hidden spaces or separate structures nearby.
The officers needed to know exactly what they were dealing with. That was when the house began to feel like it had something to hide.
Officer Landon moved to the rear side of the property to see if there was another access point or another indication that children might be inside.
Licensing officials stayed close enough to track Carla’s story while another officer was called in for support.
There was no reason to rush blindly into a house without probable cause, and the officers knew it.
Suspicion was not enough on its own. But suspicion was building, and the answers coming from Carla and the others were doing nothing to calm it.
When a mother finally arrived expecting to pick up her child, the contradiction became impossible to ignore.
She was there because she thought her kid was still on the premises. That alone was enough to confirm that at least one child had been dropped off that morning.
Yet Carla had been telling licensing officials there were no children there at all. Now the officers knew the truth was already fractured.
The parent’s arrival changed everything. There was no longer any doubt that children had been at the property.
The only question was where they were now. The mother’s presence also revealed something else: Carla had apparently contacted her and tried to steer her away before she came to the door.
That was not what an innocent daycare operator does when a concerned parent arrives to collect a child.
It was the kind of move that made everyone on scene more alert. The officers now had a growing pile of contradictions, but no direct evidence yet of exactly where the children had been placed.
Officer Landon finally met with Carla face to face. Carla presented herself as cooperative, even polite, in the manner of someone trying to look calm while the ground beneath her shifted.
She answered questions, but not in a way that resolved anything. The officer asked about the children, about how many were on the property, about who was present.
Carla tried to explain, but the answers did not line up cleanly with the reports from parents, licensing officials, or the sounds coming from the house.
At one point she suggested everyone should check the park. The children were at the park, she said.
That sounded simple enough, except the officers were hearing music from inside the property and still had no visual confirmation that the house was empty.
Officer Landon asked to check the second house on the property. Carla and Chrissy tried to contact the tenant, claiming they needed permission.
That delay only made the officers more suspicious. The second house may have been rented out, but the property was under Carla’s control, and if there was even a chance children were being kept in a place the officers could not see, they needed to know.
Carla kept trying to steer the conversation back toward licensing, as though the issue were only paperwork.
It was not. The issue was the welfare of children. The officers searched what they could.
There was no obvious proof in the rooms they could access. No children sitting in plain sight.
No immediate sign of a hidden nursery. That kind of uncertainty can make a welfare check feel like walking through fog.
The situation was not resolved, but it also was not clean enough to dismiss. Something was happening inside the property, and the adults on scene were not telling the whole story.
The most unnerving details were still coming. In one room officers found backpacks. Lots of them.
More than one or two, and enough to raise the hair on the back of anyone’s neck.
Carla said they were being cleaned for the soccer team, which did not ring true.
The officers had already seen enough to know that the backpacks were not likely random.
When they looked closer, they found diaper bags among them. Tiny belongings. Child-sized possessions. The sort of things that do not belong to a soccer team and do not sit quietly in a corner of a daycare unless there are children nearby.
Then came the sounds again. Music from below. Children’s music. Not loud enough to be heard from the street, but unmistakable once the officers were close enough to the back of the building.
The sound seemed to come from below the floor, somewhere hidden, somewhere not obvious from the main rooms.
Carla kept denying there was any basement. The officers could hear what they could hear, but the place looked closed off.
No stairs in view. No door that made sense. No open path to the level below.
The music kept coming, and that alone was enough to make the scene feel surreal.
Officer Parker stayed with Carla and Chrissy while officer Landon kept searching. At one point, when Carla tried to move around the property, Parker had to direct her back and make it clear that she needed to stay put.
The adults began talking over each other. Carla insisted the children were at the park.
Chrissy seemed uncertain or evasive. One of the women kept saying there was no basement.
Another claimed there was no reason to worry. Yet the officers had begun hearing the unmistakable evidence of life in a place they were being told was empty.
The tension became almost physical. The officers were not trying to make accusations before they had proof.
But the proof was beginning to form around them in pieces. A parent had expected her child to be there.
Another had been diverted. Bags belonging to children sat inside. Someone had been trying to hush up the sound from below.
And every time the officers pushed for clarity, the adults gave a different explanation. At some point, officer Parker heard a child crying.
Not loud, not prolonged, but enough. In a situation like that, even the faintest cry can pierce through all the noise and confusion.
If there was any chance children were hidden below the floor, every second mattered. The officers pressed harder.
Where was the basement? How did they get down there? What was behind the strange room, the concealed space, the suspicious floor coverings, the blanket pile, the locked access, the hidden path?
Carla still said there was no basement. That answer was becoming impossible to believe. The officers then found the hidden access.
The basement existed after all. Once they made their way inside, the smell hit first, a mix of soil, diapers, stale air, and the unmistakable signs of too many people crowded into too little space for too long.
What they saw next would redefine the entire scene. Children. Many children. Not one or two.
Not a small unauthorized group hidden out of sight. Twenty-five very young children were down there, concealed beneath the house in conditions that stunned everyone who entered.
The officers moved quickly. Voices rose. The children were frightened, confused, and overwhelmed. The basement had been a secret room in the worst sense of the word, a place where adults had tried to keep the outside world away while pretending nothing was wrong.
Some of the children were so small they could barely make sense of the sudden arrival of uniforms and flashlights and adult voices all around them.
Officer Landon told the children to come forward. The officers asked who was responsible, who was watching them, who had hidden them, who had allowed this to happen.
The basement had gone from mystery to nightmare in a matter of seconds. At that point the situation was no longer a licensing issue, no longer a complaint, and no longer a matter of confused paperwork.
It was a full criminal investigation. Carla Marie Faith was told directly that she was looking at obstruction at a minimum.
By that point, the officers already believed she had been lying to them, dodging questions, steering them away from the truth, and trying to keep them from finding the children.
The cover-up had become impossible to ignore. Carla tried to explain. She said she had only been babysitting.
She said she did not know all the names. She said she had been doing this for a couple of months.
But those explanations did not match the scale of what had been found. Twenty-five young children in a hidden basement was not a small mistake.
It was not a simple lapse in judgment. It was a concealed operation that had placed children at risk and sent officers searching through the house while adults lied to their faces.
Other adults in the property had roles too. Caitlyn Nelson, also known in the exchange as Katie, was among those in the basement response.
Christina Swagger, also called Chrissy, had been acting as an employee at the daycare despite later trying to distance herself from the truth.
Valerie Fresquez was another employee tied to the property. Each of them would later face legal consequences, but in the moment, what mattered most was getting the children out, calm, warm, and reunited with the people who had trusted the daycare to care for them.
The officers worked to contact parents one by one. That meant listing names, gathering numbers, making calls, and trying to explain to worried families why their children were being pulled from a hidden basement in a daycare center in El Paso County.
Some parents could not come right away. Others were frantic to get there as fast as possible.
Carla, now under immense scrutiny, told some of them not to rush if they could not.
By then, the tone had shifted from secrecy to damage control. The business was effectively closing down, and everyone on scene knew it.
Parents later described the aftermath in ways that were painful to hear. Some children had trouble sleeping afterward.
Some were uneasy in the dark. Some had nightmares. The effect of the hidden basement went far beyond the moment the officers opened the door.
For the children and families involved, the experience lingered. A place meant to provide safety and routine had become a source of fear and confusion.
That kind of betrayal leaves marks even when the physical wounds are not visible. The legal consequences followed.
Carla Marie Faith was found guilty of 26 counts of child abuse without injury, one felony count of attempting to influence a public servant, and one misdemeanor count of obstructing a peace officer.
She was sentenced to six years in prison and remained eligible for parole, with a hearing set for August 2025.
Caitlyn Nelson pled guilty to 26 counts of child abuse without injury and one felony count of possession of controlled substances.
She received a sentence of 365 days in jail with credit for 135 days served, followed by four years of probation requiring substance evaluation, treatment, monitored sobriety, a child evaluation, and 200 hours of community service.
Christina Swagger was convicted of 26 counts of child abuse without injury, one felony count of attempting to influence a public servant, and a misdemeanor count of obstructing a peace officer.
She was sentenced to two and a half years in prison, plus three years of parole.
Valerie Fresquez took a plea deal that required her to testify against the others and received a two-year deferred sentence in March 2021, which she completed in March 2023, allowing her guilty plea to be withdrawn and the charges to be dismissed.
Still, the courtroom outcomes do not erase the strange and frightening sequence that unfolded that November afternoon.
It started with a tip, a check, and a house that would not answer honestly.
It passed through a series of evasions, odd movements, hidden bags, and a basement that supposedly did not exiSt. It ended with officers opening a concealed space and finding a scene no one on the front porch had been prepared to imagine.
Children had been hidden where they could not be seen, while adults on the property spoke in circles and tried to keep the truth sealed away.
That is what made the whole case so unnerving. It was not a single dramatic moment that gave the game away.
It was the accumulation of little things. A delayed answer. A false claim. A parent at the gate.
A smell from below. Music that stopped at the wrong time. A child’s cry in the middle of confusion.
Each piece by itself might have seemed explainable. Together, they pointed to a secret that could not survive much longer.
And when the floor finally opened, the truth underneath it was far worse than anyone had imagined.
Disclaimer : This content may be created by AI for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.
