If you made up a shopping list to collect all the ingredients for the classic version of the hypercharged American suburban mom of the 21st century, it might read something like this:
Large, well-kept house on a quiet cul-de-sac, with an expensive SUV in the garage. Check.
Blond-streaked, picture-perfect hair. Check.
Full-time job but still time to take part in a full array of activities at kid's school. Check.
Expensive fertility treatments to conceive a third child. Check.
Vacations in Colorado and Disney World. Check.
But somewhere along the way, 38-year-old Bonnie Sweeten's recipe for the American dream went wrong. And when problems that had been simmering below the surface finally boiled over, they shattered her carefully crafted illusion of suburban bliss in Bucks County and shocked neighbors who knew her only as a picture-perfect mom.
Sweeten, who police said faked a kidnapping of herself and her 9-year-old daughter, then fled to Disney World in the midst of serious financial troubles, seemed to have it all.
From modest beginnings in a blue-collar neighborhood of Lower Bucks County, she built piece by piece an enviable upper-middle-class lifestyle, seemingly through hard work, high energy, and luck. A paralegal and notary public, she held a full-time job at a law firm, was an active PTA mom, and helped her husband run a landscaping business.
But her life started to resemble one of the Desperate Housewives' - neighbors are calling her Saxon Drive street "Wisteria Lane" - as she allegedly stole hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to police, to pay for her increasingly expensive lifestyle.
Sweeten faces charges of identity theft and making false reports to police. She was released from Bucks County's prison about 5 p.m. yesterday after posting 10 percent of her $1 million bail in cash.
Louis R. Busico, her attorney, said last night that Sweeten would stay with "distant relatives" at an undisclosed location in Pennsylvania and "begin mental-health treatment next week." As a condition of her bail, Sweeten's visits with her children must be supervised, he said.
A hearing is scheduled for Thursday at magisterial court in Richboro, Busico said.
Authorities said Sweeten might have taken money from financial accounts belonging to several people, including her parents and a former coworker at a law firm run by Debbie Ann Carlitz. Police are also looking into Sweeten's conduct at the New Hope law firm, where she worked for 15 years before it closed in September, and at the Carlitz Foundation, which was formed in October to raise money for autism programs and other children's charities.
Carlitz's attorney, Ellen C. Brotman, declined to elaborate on Sweeten's arrest or the reported investigation of theft of money from Carlitz, with whom Sweeten had a close relationship.
How much and from whom Sweeten might have stolen are just a couple of the questions swirling in the vortex of confusion caused by the blond, model-tall woman in the last few days.
What is known about the mystery mom is that she grew up in the Oakford section of Trevose in a small, stone rancher. She graduated from Bensalem High School in 1989 and by 1991 had moved in with the family of Anthony Rakoczy a few blocks away. They married the next year.
That same year, court records show, Rakoczy was arrested on drug charges, accused of trafficking marijuana and methamphetamine from California for distribution in Pennsylvania. The charges were dismissed for lack of evidence, refiled in 1993, and dismissed again on other procedural grounds.
The couple eventually separated, and Bonnie Rakoczy returned to using her maiden name, Siner, before becoming engaged to Richard L. Sweeten, a Pennsylvania Department of Transportation employee whom she called Larry. Before their marriage in 2005, the couple started a landscaping business called L&B Lawn Maintenance - L&B presumably for Larry and Bonnie.
Back then, said Michael Markloff, 20, who worked for the couple, Bonnie Siner was living in the Eastern Dawn Mobile Home Park, while Larry Sweeten lived with his parents on Boston Avenue.
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