Jaycee Dugard Interview: She Describes Reunion with Childhood Friend
Oprah and Allyssa Milano tweet their admiration for Jaycee Dugard.
July 12, 2011 — -- When Jaycee Dugard was freed from her kidnappers after 18 years, she wondered about the childhood friends she had left behind.
She was just 11 years old when Phillip and Nancy Garrido abducted her on June 10, 1991 as she walked to school from her family's Tahoe, Calif., home. She was a little girl with a big field trip to the water park just days away and plans to learn how to ride a horse that summer, plans that remained frozen in time.
Throughout her nearly two-decade imprisonment in the Garridos' backyard compound, she would write in journals about missing her mom and day dream about her former playmates.
Through the help of police officers, whom she met after she and her daughters were rescued in August 2009, Dugard found her best childhood friends. One of them is named Jessie.
"She's my best friend ever. I don't know what I'd do without her. I went to her wedding. She got married...I got to spend that moment of the lifetime with her," Dugard told ABC News' Diane Sawyer in an exclusive interview.
The two reunited at a birthday party for one of Dugard's daughters. Dugard writes about the reunion in her newly released memoir, "A Stolen Life."
Dugard, 31, said she never forgot about Jessie throughout her captivity.
"I am so lonely," Dugard wrote in her book. "Sometimes I dream about my friends that I used to have. Especially my very first friend, Jessie."
They became pals when Dugard was 4 and Jessie was 3 and they met as Dugard was looking for ladybugs, she wrote. "After that we were inseparable… I miss her now more than ever."
When Dugard moved to Tahoe, and away from Jessie, her friend would send her "special things," among them a bear that had a secret spot to hide things.
"I loved that bear and I loved Jessie, too, for not forgetting me," Dugard wrote.
In her conversation with Sawyer, Dugard said, "Some people you just don't forget."
The grace and courage with which Dugard has reemerged after her astonishing ordeal has made her an unforgettable character for many who watched as she told her story to Sawyer.
Oprah Winfrey tweeted, "Don't we love Jaycee's resilience. She is remarkable."
Alyssa Milano of "Who's the Boss" and "Melrose Place" tweeted, "Jaycee...your strength and grace are such an inspiration." Dugard took the name "Alyssa" after the actress when the Garridos forbade her from saying her real name.
Details of Dugard's nightmare continue to emerge and to amaze.
Just nine days after Dugard was kidnapped, her captors paid a visit to Phllip Garrido's parole officer, according to documents obtained by the Sacramento Bee newspaper, through a Freedom of Information Act request, and published in the newspaper today.
The federal parole agent wrote an upbeat report on June 19, 1991. "No major changes…A lot of complex issue (sic) with this case," according to The Bee article. "He talked about the way he met Nancy and their life together. He seems c omitted to their relationship."
It was a pattern of optimistic reports by parole officers that continued for 60 visits over the years.
Not long after Dugard gave birth to the first of her two daughters in 1994, Garrido told his parole agent, "everything is going OK," The Bee reported.
"Still employed…Says work-home going well. Talks a lot about his past and how far he has come," the parole officer wrote.
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