The Sutter Creek Police Department is working to discover the identity of a man who called a local parent on the phone and said that he had kidnapped her son and would soon kill him if she didn't turn over a large sum of money.

The call brought the woman to tears and sent a co-worker racing to Amador High School to make sure the boy in question was still alive.

On Wednesday at 2:50 p.m., a Pine Grove woman was at her place of employment in Sutter Creek when she received the menacing phone call. The woman, whose name is being withheld to protect the identity of her son, answered the call and was greeted by an unidentified man who knew her first name. At the beginning, the man spoke in a casual voice, "almost as if he was a salesman," according to the victim.

After getting the woman to acknowledge that she had a teenage son, the unidentified man suddenly told the parent that he'd kidnapped the boy and was planning to murder him if she didn't give him money.

"He was very cool and collected," said the woman's co-worker, who briefly listened to the suspect on a speaker-phone before rushing over to Amador High School to find the teenager. The mother remained on the phone in tears before the suspect hung up on her.

"He never told me exactly how he wanted the money delivered," the mother told the Ledger Dispatch. "We didn't get that far."

The Sutter Creek Police Department arrived at the business within a few minutes of the emergency call going out. As the officer took down information, the mother's co-worker pulled up with her son in tow.

Earlier that morning at 11:50 a.m., the Jackson Police Department responded to a call in which a woman said her life had been threatened by e-mail if she didn't hand over $10,000 to an unidentified person. While Jackson Police are worried that parents in their city might also be targeted and terrorized like the woman in Sutter Creek, an official cautioned the two incidents were probably not related.

"I think it was a pretty different kind of incident than what happened in Sutter Creek this afternoon," Jackson Police Sergeant Chris Mynderup said on Wednesday. "The crime we responded to today was more along the lines of an e-mail scam. It's the type of crime we've seen before. It was a message that stated that if the woman didn't hand over $10,000 then the guy would basically assassinate her. It's the type of note that might really alarm someone - but it didn't show any specific knowledge of the victim, such as her first name. It sounds like what happened in Sutter Creek was pretty unusual."

The Sutter Creek Police Department agrees. An investigation is currently under way to determine who committed the crime, which would likely result in multiple charges if the suspect is found and convicted. Meanwhile, law enforcement is cautioning parents to be aware.

Anyone with information about this incident is asked to contact the Sutter Creek Police Department at 267-5646.