TAMPA - They gained her trust with a child in one arm and a plea for a spot in her home day care.
But once Flilda Rivera let the couple inside her small peach Sulphur Springs house Wednesday, where two toddlers slept on a couch, the man pointed a silver-plated handgun at her neck.
Hand over your money, the woman holding the child told her in Spanish.
"Don't hurt the kids; I'll give you money," pleaded Rivera, her daughter Hilda Lopez recalled later.
Rivera, 60, ran to a handbag and dug out $400 and thrust it at the robbers, her daughter said.
"You got to have more money than that," the woman told her. "What if I start shooting the kids?"
The man waved the gun at the two sleeping brothers, ages 1 and 2, Lopez said.
Rivera begged them not to hurt the children and ran through the house, finding $2,000 she had stashed away to send back to Puerto Rico.
Still not satisfied, the man and woman told Rivera they were hungry. Could she cook them something, maybe a sandwich?
"You told me if I give you money, you'd leave," Rivera said.
The two, wearing only socks on their feet, nudged open the screen door and walked off along Robson Street just before noon.
Rivera called her daughter immediately. Lopez, a judge's assistant, called 911.
Lopez said she doesn't know whether her mother will give up her day care business, which she has run for about a dozen years. She's licensed with the state to care for 10 children, records show.
"This is her life," Lopez said.
Based on Rivera's description, Tampa police are looking for a black man between the ages of 30 and 35, about 5 feet 10 and 190 pounds, with a large Afro and a horizontal scar over his right eye.
His companion is described as a dark, Hispanic woman wearing a red shirt and black or green pants, about 30 to 35 years old and carrying a small child.
