Jaycee Dugard Looks Like the Image Forensic Artists Created to Help Find Her

People magazine has made public the first image of Jaycee Dugard as an adult since the woman was kidnapped 18 years ago when she was just 11 years old.

A smiling, seemingly happy Jaycee Dugard graces the cover of upcoming issue of People Magazine as a sign that after 18 years in captivity, life is finally getting back to normal.

(Handout)

On the cover of the magazine, which hits newsstands Friday, a smiling Dugard with long auburn tresses looks remarkably like the age-progression image forensic artists at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children created to help in the search for the missing woman.

Click here to visit People magazine's Web site to see the cover and read more about the exclusive interview.

Though Dugard and the two children she had with her alleged kidnapper, Philip Garrido, ultimately were rescued thanks more to the quick thinking of a police officer who met the suspect in August than to the image, similar age-progression photos have been instrumental in the recovery of more than 900 missing children.

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"The real photo of Jaycee and the age-progression are remarkably similar considering it's been 18 years," said Ernie Allen, president of the center.

Allen called the process by which forensic artists create digital versions of what a person might look like years after they went missing "half art and half science."

Short of her hair's color and style, Dugard had many of the facial features -- including the shape of her nose and mouth -- experts predicted should would when they created the digital image.

The NCMEC has been creating digital age-progressions of missing children since 1989, because, Allen said, "the public has a hard time imagining what a two-year-old might look like at six or eight years old and these images help the public recognize and identify missing children who have gotten older."

The center, which works in conjunction with the FBI and distributes the age-progression images through thousands of police departments and more than 400 private distributors that plaster the images on milk cartons, mass mailings and in well-trafficked public areas like Wal-Mart stores.

Forensic artists create a composite image using photos of the missing child, photos of the child's parents when they were the age the child would be today, images of the child's siblings and a vast database of 35,000 images of children of all races and ages.