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Kidnapped girl found 18 years later

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-08-30 17:59

In South Lake Tahoe, the shy girl last seen in a pink jacket and pink stretch pants is in everyone's hearts again, this time as a grown woman, now 29, and the mother of two children fathered by her alleged abductor.

Combination photo shows Phillip and Nancy Garrido, accused in the kidnapping of Jaycee Dugard, in their booking mugshots released to Reuters August 27, 2009. The couple accused of kidnapping an 11-year-old girl and keeping her hidden in their backyard for 18 years pleaded not guilty to dozens of charges on Friday as police searched their home for evidence related to murders of prostitutes in the 1990s. [Agencies]

Joy that she was alive was mixed with anxiety about her physical and emotional well-being, and sadness over the loss of youth and innocence.

"I used to drive by that bus stop all the time," Sue Pritchett, a retired South Lake Tahoe middle school teacher, said while talking with a friend in Dugard's old neighborhood.

"I'm absolutely ecstatic that she's been found," Pritchett said. "But I hope she's OK."

On Friday, Sue Bush, Jaycee's fifth-grade teacher at Meyers Elementary School, recalled the nightmare that day when one of her students didn't show up.

Related readings:  Kidnapped California girl found 18 years later

"We got the call just before class started," she told The Associated Press. "Some of the kids already knew about it because they had witnessed it at the bus stop. The kids were very agitated and upset.

"We brought in counselors, and during the week we wrote letters to Jaycee and her mom. We kept her chair and desk set up."

The school, now called Lake Tahoe Environmental Science Magnet School, has a memory garden out front, that started as Jaycee's Garden, said former Principal Karen Gillis-Tinlin.

Butterflies painted on the walls symbolize students who have died. There are four; one was for Jaycee.

James Tarwater, school district superintendent, said news of Dugard's reappearance was shocking and disturbing at the same time.

"I think about all the students I've had and watched grow during the last 18 years," he said. "You think of their potential."

Potential denied Jaycee.

Bush, her former teacher, agreed.

"We're all happy she's back. But it's a life ruined," she said sadly.

"I hope in a few weeks, months, whatever it takes, I'll actually be able to talk to Jaycee and Terry," she said. "Terry never gave up hope."

Gillis-Tinlin said Dugard's rescue "is a wonderful ending," but more importantly, "a beginning of the next segment of her life."

South Lake Tahoe, she said, will again bloom in pink bows and ribbons - this time in celebration of a life renewed.

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