COPS SEEK CABBIE IN HUNT FOR SVETLANA

New York Daily News; New York, N.Y.; Mar 9, 2003;

EDWARD BARRERA and MAKI BECKER DAILY NEWS WRITERS With Melissa Grace;

Detectives are hunting for a yellow cab driver who may have given a ride to a missing upper East Side woman, police said yesterday.

The Daily News revealed yesterday that an attendant at a parking garage on York Ave. between E. 68th and E. 69th Sts. told detectives searching for 44-year-old Svetlana Aronov that he saw a woman matching her description get into a taxi about 2:30 p.m. Monday - the time police believe she disappeared.

Yesterday, cops distributed thousands of flyers to yellow cab drivers hoping to find the one who picked up Aronov.

According to police, Aronov, a rare books dealer married to a doctor, left her apartment on York Ave. between 63rd and 64th Sts. with her father's cocker spaniel. A police bloodhound tracked her scent from the apartment building to E. 68th St.

Family fears kidnap

Because she failed to leave a house key for her 9-year-old daughter, as she had said she would, and also left her father waiting for her to pick him up at Kennedy Airport, Aronov's family believes she was kidnapped.

As police searched for the cabbie, Aronov's friends and loved ones fanned out across Manhattan yesterday to distribute their own flyers about the missing woman.

"The worst thing is not knowing, and all the fears that that brings," said Patricia Engel, 26, a Manhattan writer who was among the volunteers. "But you have to have hope."

[Illustration]
Caption: Svetlana Aronov