By: Lynn Green
UPDATE #2 - 8/11/08- Covina just sent me an email alerting me to the fact that Rhonda Tavey is actually trying to get custody of the children whom she ran off with. Link
UPDATE: Praiser4Life has given us an update on this. Rhonda Tavey has been captured and the children are safe! Tavey is being held without bond, as she is a clear escape risk.

As I said in an article yesterday, women need to stop being so quick to allow other people to get close to their children. You don’t always know people’s motives.
Below is a quick explanation of what has happened:
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Rhonda Tavey and her two teenage daughters were volunteering for the American Red Cross at Reliant Park when they met a 21-year-old woman and five children who had been forced from their New Orleans home.
Tavey felt drawn to Erica Alphonse and her children, then ranging in age from 2 weeks to 5 years old. She offered to take them in.
“Why? God led me to do it,” she said in a telephone interview with the Houston Chronicle on Wednesday night. “I loved them, cared for them, supported them.”
Alphonse, for her part, considered Tavey her family’s “guardian angel” after Katrina took everything away.
Three years later, Alphonse accuses Tavey of stealing the children while Tavey says she’s hiding them to protect them from abuse and neglect.
If you suspect neglect, call protective services but don’t take anyone’s children and run off with them. And…if the police ask you to return the children, don’t ignore the law. If you do, you are in contempt and you will have an Amber Alert put out on you, which is presently the case. This chick, Rhonda Tavey kidnapped those children on July 11th and refuses to return them.
For the past month, authorities have been in contact with Tavey, trying to convince her to turn over the children to Child Protective Services, said assistant district attorney Jane Waters, chief of the family criminal law division.
“She has a lot of excuses and we looked into each of her excuses and her reasons and determined that we needed to file charges,” Waters said.
The missing children are all black, and have black hair and brown eyes. The eldest girl is Rod Keesa Alphonse, 8. She is about 4 feet tall and weighs 80 pounds. The next oldest daughter, Alaysa Alphonse, 6, is also about 4 feet tall and 80 pounds. The third daughter is Yasmine Alphonse, 4. She is 3 feet, 9 inches tall and weighs 60 pounds. The two youngest children are 3-year-old twin boys: Eric Alphonse and Erin Alphonse, both about 3 feet tall and 50 pounds.
Tavey is believed to be driving a blue van, Texas License Plate, 963-PTB and may be in the Dallas area. People are urged to contact Precinct 4 constables at 281-376-3472 if they have any information.
Source
Hat tip to Covina for lead