Skaneateles, N.Y. ? Five-year-old Brittany Fish wanted to visit a neighborhood friend early one evening. So she hopped on her scooter for a two-block ride to her friend’s house. Brittany never made it. Nor did she return home that night.

She was found the next day at an abandoned warehouse, about seven miles from her home, by a passer-by who was interested in buying the building and had stopped by on a whim to inspect it. Brittany was bound with duct tape and hidden under a tarpaulin, the victim of a kidnapping.

After the child’s safe return to her father — Brittany’s parents are divorced — her aunt, Linda Slifka, sat down with a pen and paper and started writing what she felt. Forty-five minutes later, the core of a story had been born.

Slifka always wanted to be a writer. But it was her young niece’s near-tragedy that finally inspired her.

“I’ve always written from the heart. I’m very sensitive and emotional. This hit so close to home, I couldn’t help but be inspired to write about this,” says Slifka, who has just published her first book, “Where’s My Puppy?”

Aimed at 2-to-7-year-olds, “Where’s My Puppy?” is about a boy named Jack who loses his dog, Scruffy. After a long, frantic search, Jack finds him with the help of neighbors, family, friends and police.

In the end, Jack asks his parents: “If I get lost would everyone be as worried about me, as they were about Scruffy?”

Their answer: “Even more worried … because we love you very much.” Jack responds: “I wouldn’t want everyone to worry like that again.”

Slifka hopes the story might teach children about the importance of playing safely. She doesn’t want other families to experience what she did — the kidnapping of a 5-year-old relative.

“I would never have written anything like this if it wasn’t for what happened,” she says. “I’m just sorry it took something like this. But now we are turning something extremely positive out of something so tragic.”

Syracuse Police Chief Steve Thompson said police are still looking for Britanny’s kidnapper.

Slifka grew close to the girl during a year when Brittany’s father, Slifka’s brother, lived with her in Skaneateles, 20 miles southwest of Syracuse. “She was like my weekend daughter,” says Slifka, who has two children, ages 16 and 22.

Slifka had dabbled in writing poetry and plays but had never been published.

Publisher Dan Brown of Outland Books said it was how Slifka treated the story that engaged him.

Slifka is giving 71/2 cents from the sale of each book to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.