Toddler Who Spent 22 Hours Alone in the Woods Found Safe

— -- A 2-year-old girl was grinning ear to ear Thursday, wrapped in a blanket after being found in the woods 22 hours after she wandered away from her Michigan home.

Brooklyn Lynn Lilly wandered off while playing outside her home in Tawas City in the eastern part of the state near Lake Huron.

Her neighbors and family feared the worst.

“We worried maybe somebody came and grabbed her,” family friend Patrick McDonald said.

State troopers, deputies and firefighters scoured the area on foot, using ATVs, and in the air, until storms made their search even more cumbersome.

Somehow, Trooper Denis McGuckin and his K-9, Jax, found Brooklyn. But she wasn’t moving.

Then, the sweetest moment.

“She had lifted her head up off the ground and looked back towards me and my dog and began smiling,” McGuckin said.

Jeffery Seyfried, the assistant fire chief for the Tawas City Fire Department, later snapped the photo of Brooklyn, grinning wide.

“I asked her, I said ‘Brooklyn, can I take your picture?’ She looked up and gave me this great big smile and I said, ‘Thank you,’ and she says, ‘I love the woods.’”