Couple Left Two Young Children Home with Frozen Dinners at Christmas. Then They Hopped on a Plane to Mexico

It was the kind of headline that made people stop mid-sentence. In a quiet Chicago suburb just before Christmas, a woman opened her front door to find her neighbors’ two young daughters standing outside in the freezing cold.

Nine-year-old Nicole Schoo and her 4-year-old sister, Diana, were trembling and scared. They told Connie Stadelmann that their parents had gone on a nine-day Christmas vacation to Mexico — and left them behind. They also said a fire alarm had been blaring and something in their house seemed to be leaking.

The date was Dec. 21, 1992. Two years earlier, Home Alone had hit theaters. But this wasn’t a quirky holiday mishap. It was real life, and it was terrifying.

Nicole and Diana were the children of David Schoo, a 45-year-old engineer, and his wife Sharon, 35, a homemaker. The couple had departed the day before for an Acapulco getaway, leaving their daughters to care for themselves in the family’s tri-level Tudor-style home — over Christmas, no less.

There was no babysitter. No reachable emergency number. The girls were left with frozen dinners, cereal, and a note spelling out when to eat and when to go to bed.

When firefighters and sheriff’s investigators arrived to check on reports of smoke, they found none. But they also found no adults. With two small children alone in the house, authorities began asking urgent questions. Nicole and Diana were placed first with their maternal grandmother and later into foster care while officials searched for their parents.

The Schoos were finally located on Dec. 28 at a Houston airport customs checkpoint, returning home.

Both parents were charged with two felony counts of child abandonment and cruelty to children, along with a misdemeanor child-endangerment charge. The story exploded nationwide.

As reporters dug into the family’s background, the couple was portrayed as withdrawn and unusual, even by those close to them. David had earned a pharmacy degree from the University of Illinois in 1970. But in 1978 he surrendered his pharmacist’s license after admitting to stealing about 1,900 high-potency Valium tablets from an Aurora drugstore where he worked. After that, he shifted into engineering.

Sharon was described by her father as someone who kept even relatives at arm’s length, saying she demanded appointments for visits.

A grand jury later indicted the Schoos on multiple charges, including felony abandonment, neglect, endangerment, and cruelty to children. The Chicago Tribune reported that the couple avoided trial through a misdemeanor plea deal and received two years of probation.

The impact didn’t end there. Public outrage was so intense that it pushed lawmakers to act. In 1993, Illinois changed its legal definition of child abandonment to include intentionally leaving a child younger than 14 alone for 24 hours or longer.

That same year, the girls were reportedly placed for adoption.

Even after the media storm faded, neighbors remained furious — not just at what had happened, but at the possibility it could happen again. One neighbor summed up the community’s mood bluntly: let the parents travel wherever they want, as long as they never get the chance to hurt their children again.