When Linda Hooper met her son, Cruz, in the fall of 1981, she loathed him. 
 
 A veteran elementary teacher, Hooper's conscience told her it was wrong to hate a child, especially a student. But Cruz Riojas' tendency toward frequent, violent outbursts made it difficult for Hooper to think of him as anything other than a "holy terror." 
 
 In the 33 years following that school year at Brown Elementary School, however, Riojas would not only change Hooper's opinion of him forever - he would also change his last name. 
 
 Infamous classroom legend 
 
 "There evidently is a very thin line between love and hate," Hooper said during an hourlong interview at her home last week. Cruz, who lives in San Antonio, was in West Texas visiting family for the Fourth of July weekend. 
 
 It's a long, emotional story of how teacher and pupil became mother and son, and one they chose to tell for the first time in almost 35 years. 
 
 "What had happened was for like about five years before I got him, I was warned, 'You don't want that child,' because he was really a holy terror," Hooper, 68, said. "He had a reputation, and he intended to live up to it." 
 
 Sometimes Cruz misbehaved, using his still-prevalent sense of dry humor to distract the class from the teacher's lesson. Other times, he threw chairs or stabbed his peers. His academic standing made for an extra challenge. He had dyslexia and was two grade levels behind in reading, so he was considered a special education student. 
 
 By the time Cruz reached sixth grade, he had become a Brown 
 
 Elementary legend. His notorious antics led Hooper to tell her principal, "If you put that Riojas kid in my class, I'm going to quit." 
 
 Though she never made good on that promise, Hooper said she wasn't joking. 
 
 "I really had hoped that he'd be put in another person's room, but at that time I was the only one who could really handle the hard discipline problems," she said. 
 
 'Total squalor' 
 
 Cruz, now 45, said when he was growing up he did anything to get attention. The violence stemmed from a constant need to defend himself at home. 
 
 During his sixth-grade year with the woman he once called Mrs. Hooper, Cruz's biological mother was on husband No. 5 - an abusive, tyrannical man Cruz doesn't like to talk about. 
 
 Cruz, his four half-siblings, their mother and "No. 5" lived in a one-room lean-to on a turnrow in the middle of a field. 
 
 He wore the same green pants and striped shirt to school every day, Hooper remembers, and the only shoes he had to wear were his sister's. He and his siblings were sent home with lice 12 times that year. 
 
 "It was total squalor," Hooper said. "I would not let my animals live the way they had to live." 
 
 Cruz described it this way: "We slept on the floor and ate ----." 
 
 That's all one needs to know to understand the situation, he said. 
 
 Change of heart 
 
 In December of that school year, Cruz changed, Hooper said. He starting asking if he could help around the classroom, and it wasn't long before Hooper and her husband, Gale, hired him to do odd jobs at their home and rental properties for cash - money his stepfather didn't let him keep. 
 
 As a healthier relationship developed between Cruz and his teacher, the Hoopers' home became a refuge for the troubled student. Whenever he and No. 5 fought, Cruz ran 7.5 miles from his house to theirs. 
 
 His home life worsened as he entered seventh grade at Atkins Junior High School. 
 
 One cold, snowy day in February 1983, Cruz had the last fight he would have with his stepfather - one in which he told the man in no uncertain terms he would beat him up when he got older. 
 
 No. 5 kicked him out. He was 12. 
 
 Cruz's mom packed everything he owned in a cardboard box, called Hooper and took her son to hide at a nearby truck stop. When Hooper arrived, she found the two behind an 18-wheeler, and Cruz's mom asked if Hooper could keep him for the weekend - just until things at home calmed down. 
 
 "He never left," Hooper said. "I had him from then on." 
 
 From student to son 
 
 Neither Cruz nor Hooper thought his stay would be long term, but neither complained as the days, months and years went by. 
 
 "If it was an hour, it was an hour I didn't have to spend there," Cruz said. "You think, 'Hey, lunch? Lunch is great.' Lunch worked its way into dinner, and here we are 35 years later." 
 
 Hooper said her husband, a retired firefighter, never questioned her decision to let Cruz stay, which she admires him for to this day. Gale and Cruz formed a bond of mutual respect Cruz had never experienced with the other father figures in his life. 
 
 As Cruz settled into his new life, the Hoopers bought him a new wardrobe and helped him get his first job, an Avalanche-Journal paper route, so he could make his own money and buy things he'd never had. 
 
 Cruz also started performing better in school - credit that goes to retired special education teacher James Harris, Hooper said, who became another positive influence in Cruz's life. Under Harris' instruction, Cruz tested out of special education by his high school graduation. 
 
 Everything was going well for the family until Cruz hurt his knee at school. Emergency room doctors would not give him stitches without a parent or legal guardian present. 
 
 "That was the first catalyst of my going to his mother and asking for permission, No. 1, to be able to give him stitches," Hooper said. They also wanted to take Cruz on vacation to Fun Valley, Colorado, but would again need her signature. 
 
 They got it, and Hooper carried that paper everywhere, eventually laminating it to keep it from fraying. 
 
 "I lived in fear every single day that they would just come jerk the whole thing away from me," Hooper said. "Until he was about 16, I lived in absolute total fear that there would be a knock on the door saying, 'He is not yours. We want him back. There's nothing you can do about it.' And I would've had to give him up. I had no rights at that time." 
 
 Hooper said by the time Cruz was 16, she thought if someone did try to take him away, she could take the matter to court and keep it there until he turned 18. 
 
 "He was obviously mine by then," she said. "After you show somebody what they can have, when they've got their own bedroom, when they've got their own clothes, when they've got a reason to get up in the morning and they change their whole attitude - he was no longer chip-on-his-shoulder anymore and happy all the time - then going back would be worse. It would be worse than if I had never shown him any of it." 
 
 Hooper's choice to claim him as her own didn't come without opposition. Her mother and friends - who now love Cruz, Hooper said - thought she had lost her mind. 
 
 "It was a different era," Cruz said. "Back in the early '80s, white people didn't adopt Mexican kids. It just didn't happen." 
 
 There was no formal adoption, however. At least not for a while. 
 
 "He had asked many, many times to change his name to ours," Hooper said. "We were afraid that he was young, that he might not understand what he was getting into, that you cannot change your ethnicity by changing your name, and all these things. We never said no, but we just never did it." 
 
 Hooper said she was on a school trip in Dallas when she got a phone call - her "biggest joy" - shortly before Cruz's 30th birthday. He wanted to be adopted. 
 
 Becoming Cruz Hooper 
 
 Cruz said he had thought about legally changing his name since he was 18, but for one reason or another, it never happened. When he got married, he and his wife went by the surname Riojas. 
 
 At age 29, however, Cruz decided to go through with it, and his attorney-aunt told him the easiest way would be to have the Hoopers adopt him. 
 
 Cruz said at first he thought he was a little old for that, but decided it was the best option. 
 
 "I just thought it would honor my parents," he said, holding back tears. 
 
 In a formal adoption ceremony Jan. 5, 1998, Cruz and his wife, Anel, legally became part of the family - last name and all. 
 
 "This was such a joy because we had four girls so there was not going to be a boy that would carry our name," Hooper said. "When he asked us it was such a joy to us. Gale was so thrilled. Because see, now we have a son, and he will carry our name, and our grandchildren's names are Hooper. It was such a blessing to me even to be asked." 
 
 But Hooper didn't need legal papers to prove what she had known in her heart for so long. 
 
 "He was my son from the day I kept him," she said. "In December of that year ... he was such a brat, I had already started loving him." 
 
 Cruz does well in his job for payroll company Corporate Solutions in San Antonio, and the Hoopers joke he could buy and sell them any day. He generally keeps quiet about his past - Hooper recalled a time recently when someone told him, "You wouldn't understand. You were born with a silver spoon in your mouth," and Cruz said nothing - choosing rather to focus on the present. 
 
 Gale, a man of few words, didn't say much as he listened to his wife and son tell their story, but did interject one time to add, "He's made me very proud." 
 
 Cruz changed their lives, Hooper said, and in doing so, he changed the way she taught for 18 years after he left her classroom. She looked at students differently, thinking of them all as her Cruzes. 
 
 As the interview neared the end, Hooper wanted to make sure she said one more thing about her son, the boy who once caused her so much grief - the man who's now her pride and joy. 
 
 With tears filling her eyes, Hooper paused. 
 
 "I think he's really the one thing in my life I've done right." 
 
 natalie.gross@lubbockonline.com 
 
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 @AJ_NatalieGross ||||| moms Classroom ‘terror’ adopted by loving teacher: ‘She just wouldn’t give up’ July 15, 2014 at 2:54 PM ET 
 
 Teacher Linda Hooper had been warned about a “holy terror” of a student rising up through Brown Elementary School in Lubbock, Texas. So by the time Cruz Riojas was set to enter the sixth grade, she issued a warning to the school’s principal: “I will quit if I have him in my class.” 
 
 
 
 Courtesy of Linda Hooper 
 
 But then the story, as first reported in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, began to change. Sure enough, it was Hooper's classroom that the 12-year-old walked into in August 1980. He was far behind in academics — two years behind in reading and classified as special ed — and she quickly experienced his troubling behavior. 
 
 “He had outbursts, threw chairs," Linda, now 68, told TODAY. "If a child touched him, they’d be down on the floor in two seconds.” 
 
 
 
 Cruz, who is only now opening up about his story, lived with his mother, stepfather and five half-siblings, and suffered years of physical abuse at the hands of his stepfather. He was bused to Linda’s school wearing the same clothes every day, and he brought his troubling homelife with him. 
 
 “I made a joke about everything,” Cruz, now 45, told TODAY. “I wouldn’t let my stepfather see me cry, and I carried that with me to school.” 
 
 Cruz’s sixth-grade year included frequent clashes with his physical-education teacher, who sent him to Linda. “Every day (that teacher would) send him in and say, 'I’m not dealing with this kid, he’s yours,'" she recalls. "I didn’t know what to do, but he was in there, so I started letting him help me. I had him reshelving books, grading papers, to make that period go by. And he began to like to do stuff.” 
 
 And the student recognized that his teacher cared about him. “I saw that she just wouldn’t give up," Cruz said. "She said, 'This persona that you project isn’t who you really are.' ” 
 
 Linda started having Cruz come to the home she shared with her husband Gale, a firefighter, and their four daughters. She’d give him money for small household chores, and arranged for his first job, a paper route. 
 
 Courtesy of Linda Hooper 
 
 Cruz developed a particularly remarkable relationship with his teacher's husband. “He never had a man in his life that was worth anything and he respected Gale," Linda said. 
 
 He began spending more and more time at the Hooper home, and would frequently run the 7.5 miles between his home and theirs when he had a fight with his stepfather. But one day in February 1982, Linda received a call from Cruz’s mother that would change all of their lives. 
 
 “His stepfather had beaten him, so she called me and asked, can I keep him until things blew over?” Linda recalls. “She put everything he owned in a cardboard box, and they huddled behind an 18-wheeler until I came to meet them.” 
 
 Cruz thought he'd only be staying with his teacher's family for an hour, but that hour turned into days, months, and then years. 
 
 Linda recalls the first time Cruz stopped calling her "Mrs. Hooper." “We were in a grocery store, and he wanted everyone to know I was his mother, because people would look at us funny. He said, 'MOTHER can I have this?' He was getting everyone’s attention, to say, 'Everybody look, this is my mom.'" 
 
 Courtesy Linda Hooper 
 
 Thanks to the Hoopers and another dedicated teacher, Cruz moved out of the special-education program and graduated with his peers. He went on to study at Texas Tech University and later met Anel Montemayor, his future wife. And just before his 30th birthday, Cruz called Linda to ask if she and Gale would officially adopt him. The answer was obvious. 
 
 “He said he wanted to honor us, and it was a big honor," Linda said. "I’ve always known he loved me, but this really showed he loved us.” 
 
 Cruz and Anel Riojas became Cruz Riojas Hooper and Anel Montemayor-Hooper. They now live in San Antonio with their two children, Hannah, 13, and Greyson, 9. 
 
 Cruz is careful to teach his children about their Mexican roots while also honoring the traditions and cultures from the Hooper side. He hasn’t yet shared with them the full story of his journey, but he’s getting there. 
 
 “My parents taught me to never give up. Just persevere," he said. "My father would always say, 'The light at the end of the tunnel isn’t always a train. It’s a light, and move toward it.'" ||||| Steven Hernandez, 22, left, laughs with his mother, Maria Mancia, right, of Rialto, his younger brother Daniel, 8, and Daniel’s half-brother, David Martinez, 16, top, on Thursday at the San Bernardino County District Attorney office in San Bernardino. Hernandez, who was kidnapped by his father in 1995, was recently located in Puebla, Mexico and reunited with his family today. MICAH ESCAMILLA — STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER 
 
 SAN BERNARDINO >> For the last 21 years, Maria Mancia has clung to a yellowing and blurry photo of her son when he was only 1 year old, the only thing she had left of him, his dark eyes looking out from underneath a mop of dark brown hair. 
 
 “It’s all I had of him,” she said. “It was always with me.” 
 
 More than two decades ago, Mancia lost her little boy, not to disease or a tragic accident but to her son’s father, Valentin Hernandez, who took their son, Steve Hernandez, from the couple’s Rancho Cucamonga home and fled to Mexico. 
 
 “All that time I didn’t know what had happened to him,” said Mancia, 42, now living in Rialto, her eyes red from crying. 
 
 Although Mancia never gave up hope she would one day find her son, as the years dredged on, she began to prepare herself for the possibility she may never know her son. That changed last week. 
 
 “Some detectives came to my house, and at first I was scared because I didn’t know what was going on, but then they told me they found him. They found Steven,” she said breathlessly wiping tears from her face. 
 
 After more than 20 years, investigators Karen Cragg and Michelle Faxon with the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Child Abduction Unit were sitting in her neat little home, telling the incredulous mother of four that her son, her little Steven, was in Mexico and was coming home for good. 
 
 Using DNA, investigators were able to positively identify Steven Hernandez as the little boy in the worn and tattered photograph. 
 
 Thursday, the mother and son had a tearful reunion at the District Attorney’s Office. 
 
 Like awkward intimate strangers, the two embraced — Steven, now 22, tenderly wiping the tears from his mother’s face, a face he had no memory of. 
 
 “It was a shock,” said the young man who now stands several inches over his mother. “I didn’t know if she was alive or not and to get a call that says they found my mother and that she had been looking for me, it was like a cold bucket of water. But it’s good. It’s good.” 
 
 Shyly waiting a few steps away from Mancia was Daniel Martinez, Steven’s 8-year-old brother. He buried his head in his mother’s side when she prodded him to talk to Steven. 
 
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 “He said the first thing he wants to do with you is to take you to McDonald’s,” Mancia smiled and said to Steven, and Daniel smiled sheepishly. 
 
 In 1995, after a few arguments and fights, Mancia came home from work to find the apartment she shared with Hernandez and their son ransacked. 
 
 “I thought we were robbed, but then I noticed the only thing missing was Steven’s things and his clothes,” she said. 
 
 As soon as she realized the horrifying truth, Mancia immediately called Hernandez’s family members. 
 
 “They wouldn’t tell me anything,” she sobbed. She then called San Bernardino County sheriff’s officials to report the parental kidnapping. 
 
 Hernandez, 54, not only took the child but also all the photographs and paperwork, including an ultrasound, that could identify Steven, officials sad. 
 
 Mancia had to write to family members in El Salvador to get a photo of her own son, Mancia said. 
 
 By 2011, the cold case was handed over to the Child Abduction Unit and Faxon and Cragg began working to find Steven. The investigators knocked on doors and in February of this year, they learned the father and son were in Puebla, Mexico. 
 
 “We weren’t sure, but with help with our partners at the (Department of Justice), we were able to track him down,” Cragg said. 
 
 Investigators received a tip that Steve Hernandez, now 22 years old, was possibly living in Puebla, Mexico. 
 
 At the time, Steven’s father had gone missing, said Cragg, who used his disappearance to begin a dialogue with the young man who was in the middle of enrolling at the University of Puebla to study law. 
 
 “(We) told Steve we were conducting an investigation related to the disappearance of his father,” said Cragg in a statement. “During the conversation, we found several similarities in his history that matched that of our missing boy.” 
 
 Cragg and Faxon managed to get a DNA sample from Steve. His sample and a sample from Mancia were sent to the DOJ lab in the beginning of May. 
 
 “They said it could take a month at the quickest,” Faxon said. “The results came back in two weeks.” 
 
 The investigators excitedly called Mancia and Steven to tell them the news. 
 
 “That’s really why we do this,” Faxon said. “For that moment and for today, when they finally met.” 
 
 The mother and son reunion is all part of what the unit does. Members have worked parental and familial abduction cases that have taken investigators across the country and around the world, said District Attorney Mike Ramos. 
 
 “I’m extremely proud of the team and of all the work they do,” said Ramos. “They never gave up, and I’m glad we can all be a part of this moment.” 
 
 Steven, an American citizen, hopes to continue with his education in the United States. After learning English, he still has aspirations to study law. 
 
 The newly unified family chatted and laughed in the corner of the District Attorney’s media room. Mancia lamented that she only had the one photo of her son for the last two decades, to which Steven replied, “I have some pictures that I brought with me. Now you’ll have a few more.”
– Cruz Riojas came from a troubled home: He was reportedly beaten by his stepfather, lived in a decrepit one-room lean-to with six other family members, and wore the same clothes to school every day, according to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. He also caused trouble in school and was known as a “holy terror,” says Linda Hooper, a teacher who first encountered Cruz in the early ‘80s, when he was 12 years old. But then an amazing thing happened: He started spending more time with Hooper, who would give him tasks to do around the classroom. He eventually began coming for visits at her home, where she lived with her husband and four daughters, often running the nearly eight miles between their two houses to get away from his stepfather. After an incident with his stepfather in 1983, Cruz’s mother asked if he could stay with the Hoopers for a few days till everything blew over. "He never left" after that, Hooper says. "I had him from then on." He became a part of the Hooper family, taking on a paper route to make money and doing better in school, placing out of special education classes by the time he graduated. More than a decade later, he was still part of the Hooper family—but he wanted to make it official by asking the Hoopers to adopt him right before his 30th birthday. “He said he wanted to honor us, and it was a big honor," Hooper tells Today. "I’ve always known he loved me, but this really showed he loved us.” The adoption went through in 1998, but Cruz "was my son from the day I kept him,” Hooper says. The family is just now telling their story for the first time. (Click for the full article, or read the story of a police officer who found a baby alive at a murder scene—and adopted her 30 years later.)