The news was almost too bizarre to believe - a school bus full of youngsters had vanished from a rural road on a hot summer day, leaving no trace.
But it was true, and the news soon spread across the nation on July 15, 1976, as police and reporters scrambled to explain the mysterious disappearance.It was as if the earth had swallowed them. And indeed, it had.
The second jolt came some 30 hours later when the children and their driver, Ed Ray, reappeared miles away after tunneling free from a moving van in which they had been buried alive in a rock quarry by three young kidnappers with a $5 million dream.
The Democrats nominated Jimmy Carter for president the night before the kidnapping, the Olympics were under way and the nation still was reveling in its July 4th bicentennial celebration.
But for a couple of days 20 years ago, the nation's news center was this hot, dusty farm town of 5,000 people smack dab in California's geographic center.
Residents and reporters alike said they didn't really believe the first Associated Press stories saying that Ray and his 26 passengers were missing.
The town's lone police dispatcher was swamped with media calls as word of the kidnappings spread during the night. Someone estimated that 200 reporters came to cover the story. A New York Daily News staffer took a taxi 250 miles from Los Angeles.
The crush of reporters overwhelmed telephone service in that pre-cellular era, resulting in busy signals on call after call from pay phones by the middle of the following day, July 16.
The phone jam was so bad the kidnappers were unable to reach officials in Chowchilla to demand a $5 million ransom.
Some reporters drove 40 miles south to Fresno so they could feed the news to their editors, until Pacific Bell installed a battery of private telephone lines in a makeshift press room that normally housed firetrucks.
Town residents hung around outside, shocked and worried about the children but fascinated by the media frenzy.
First rumor, then fact, circulated in the evening that the children had been found alive and safe.
The youngsters - ages 5-14 - and their bus driver literally had dug their way to freedom after being entombed for some 18 hours.
It had been almost 30 hours since they had been abducted and forced from their yellow school bus into two minivans while on their way home from summer school.
A chartered bus brought the children to the police station parking lot before dawn on July 17 to the cheers of townspeople and the tears of parents.
The children are grown now and scattered. Ray, retired for eight years, bought the school bus he drove July 15, 1976, as a memento.
A memorial plaque surrounded by yellow roses in front of City Hall lists the victims' names and expresses "heartfelt thanks" for their safe return.
Frederick N. Woods and brothers James and Richard Schoenfeld, scions of well-to-do San Francisco area families, were convicted of kidnapping and sentenced to life prison terms. They appear before parole boards every few years but so far have not convinced anyone they should be set free.
James Schoenfeld summed up the crime in a pre-sentencing interview:
"The plan was simple in theory - kidnap a school bus, hold the occupants for ransom. The state pays us; we release the hostages. All our problems would be solved, and the state would be reimbursed by their insurance company.
"Of course, everything did not go entirely as planned. The escape of the children and Mr. Ray, of course, was not in accordance with our plans."