Daily News from New York, New York • 8

CD tar md uanGDm Baby boy fit III left in bag Mom holds out hope LAURIE SYLVIA smiles most sadly when she speaks of the Thanksgiving that she planned to spend with her daughter. "I was telling everyone at work, 'I'm going to New York City and go to the Thanksgiving she says. Sylvia speaks in the briney MICHAEL fie, DALY V- ft W- near hosp Police responding yesterday to a report of a suspicious knapsack left near a Queens hospital were pleasantly surprised when the package contained not a bomb but a healthy baby boy. "The bag started moving," said Sgt Michael Wang from the 110th Precinct in Queens. "I said, That's not a bomb.

i Cops and personnel from St John's Queens Hospital in Elmhurst found the bag about. 5:30 a.m. Inside was a new-, born boy wearing white pajamas and socks and wrapped in a red towel, said Carmen Melendez, a department spokeswoman, Hospital spokeswoman Daphne Lawrence said the baby is 4 to 7 days old and weighs 6 pounds, 5 ounces. "He was slightly dehydrated, but he's in good condition," she said. Hospital security received an anonymous call early yesterday morning from a woman who told them there was a bag in the alley, Lawrence said.

"No one said anything about a baby, so we thought it could be a bomb," she said. Wang responded with Officers Gerald Leonard and Mark Pepe. Wang's initial reaction to the find was one of an WHEREABOUTS UNKNOWN: Michael Sullivan and Camden Sylvia. accent of her native Martha's Vineyard. Her family settled there three generations back and the men worked the fishing boats.

Two of her uncles vanished at sea in the 1950s, never to be found. "That's another disappearance story," Sylvia says. The current disappearance story began 11 days ago, when she got a call that her 37-year-old daughter, Camden Sylvia, had gone missing, along with Michael Sullivan, in the human sea of New York. The island family again was pitched into the singular torment of uncertainty. "That's the worst part, not knowing," Laurie Sylvia says.

"Even your emotions are on hold." Sylvia hurried to New York and the Pearl St. building where her daughter lived with Sullivan. She entered the top-floor loft that happened to have once been a ship's chandlery. "There were flowers on the table; the bed was made," Sylvia says. "Everything was neat as a pin." Sylvia came upon a wallet, a passport, an appointment book and an unreturned video.

She took them in a plastic bag to the police, who were at first not overly alarmed. "It was like, 'They'll turn Sylvia says. Sylvia kept an even keel un-til that night, when she slipped into her daughter's neatly made bed. She then chanced upon something that too keenly reminded her who should be lying right there. "Tucked in between the pillows was a little red cap," Sylvia says.

Sylvia knew that her daughter wore the cap at the approach of each winter, when the landlord was grudging with the heat This annual chill had been just part of city living when you are paying $300 for 1,400 square feet That had changed the previous year, when Sullivan fell ill. The couple this year resolved not to pay rent until Herald Square there was sufficient heat The day of the disappearance, they had signed a letter to the landlord, Bob Rodriguez, who had a locksmith shop on the first floor. Still, Sylvia did not at first suspect the landlord might be involved in the disappearance. Rodriguez replaced the front door lock, saying he was worried somebody might find the missing couple's keys. "He shook my hand and said, 'If I can do anything, let me Sylvia says.

"He gave me some new keys and that was it" On Sunday, Rodriguez' family reported that he had him- -self gone missing while on the way to speak with detectives. The police had by then come to share Sylvia's alarm and brought a bloodhound that needed a well-scented item of clothing. Sylvia provided a sock Sullivan had left tucked in a shoe. By Friday, the police still had nary a clue. The Rodriguez family had refused to let police search their upstate property, and Sylvia announced she was going to stand in front of the locksmith shop with a sign.

"Saying, 'Have a heart Let them Sylvia says. Sylvia was dissuaded by her younger sister, Michele, who had come to join the vigil. The sisters felt it to be sacrilege to disturb anything in the loft, but they had become so suspicious of the landlord that they did not want to leave Camden's most treasured possessions in his building. They be-gan filling dark brown cardboard boxes. "Her art, her books, that was her life," Sylvia told a visitor.

"If I can't protect my daughter at this point, at least I can protect her stuff." via said. "I have been trying not to let myself go, because if I do I'll dissolve." Sylvia showed a visitor a picture Camden had taken of herself with Michael, one hand out to snap the picture, the other embracing him, the two of them smiling. "I have hopes, but if you have any kind of logic, it doesn't seem these people are safe and well," Sylvia said. At a front window, Sylvia looked at two geranium boxes on the fire escape. Her daughter had ringed them with scallop shells.

"Those are definitely Martha's Vineyard shells," she said. MER TWO sons would now drive down from there and load the boxes into a truck to be driven north toward the place where her two uncles vanished a half-century ago. Her heart still holds a hope against hope that maybe this time her family will enjoy a miracle and she will join her daughter for the Thanksgiving Day parade after all. "Maybe that'll happen yet" she says. On her daughter's side of the bed, Sylvia found the book "Inviting the Muses." "She was halfway through," Sylvia said.

Sylvia picked up the book and put it down, then picked it up again, finally packing it away. "Her place is still in it," Sylvia said. Camden had plans for a master's degree in fine arts, and Sylvia now came upon a Yale University catalogue. Other catalogues were for study in Florence and Ireland. "The girl wanted to do things," Sylvia said.

Sylvia labeled a box "notebooks" and filled it with journals in which her daughter had recorded her days and thoughts and inspirations. One notebook imagined trips to Mexico, Hawaii and Tuscany. "I think she was waiting for the lottery to come through," Sylvia said. Sylvia stopped when she came upon linoleum prints that she, Camden and Sullivan had done together on an earlier visit to New York. "Oh, this is too much," Syl ger, not relief, he said.

"A bomb I can handle, said Wang. "But I was an gry. Anyone who leaves a baby. It's a lot better than a dead baby; though." 1 He said the police department is investigating the case and trying to fincj the infant's mother. i Lawrence said that a neo-natologist examined and X-rayed the baby who is now in the pediatrics unit at the hospital, a division of the Catholic Medical Center.

A chaplain and a priest came to bless the infant and named him John James Patrick, said Lawrence. Catherine Donaldson-Evans I CO LU weekly THE WAS EASY TO RHYME. THE WHEFENPOOFS WA1TAKE SOME TIME. Instead, wel sing the praises of tie HoSdoy Men's Sportswear collection from Ron Chereskin! See 1he entire line, and meet designer Ron Chereskin on Monday, Now, 24 at in Men's on the Main Floor. The legendary Yale University Whlffenpoofs, (the country's oldest collegiate acapefla singing group, decked out in 1he newest Chereskin designs) will serenade us, and you'll receive a complimentary Whlffenpoof CD with any Ron Chereskin purchase! WHO'S COMING TO MACY'S TODAY AT NOON? THE GRINCH THAT'S WHO, AND NOT A MOMENT TOO SOON! Irs Dr.

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