Jaycee Dugard: Part 3: The Escape

On June 10, 1991, Jaycee Lee Dugard, an 11-year-old girl, was abducted from a street while walking to a school bus stop in Meyers, California, United States.  Jaycee remained missing for over eighteen years until 2009.  Join us as we explore Jaycee's years in captivity and her eventual escape.  This is the 3rd and final episode in this series.  We are extremely proud of this series; we hope you enjoy.

We would like to provide a link to The JAYC Foundation, Inc. - The JAYC Foundation provides services by utilizing treatment programs that focus on healing through traditional therapy along with animal therapy, equine therapy, and other experiential therapies.
https://thejaycfoundation.org/about-us/

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Transcript

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Previously on The Secret Sits, Jaycee Lee Dugard has been kidnapped and held against her will for 16 years.  She has now given birth to two daughters, fathered by her captor Phillip Garrido, and that is where we find ourselves while we pick up our story today.

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Welcome to The Secret Sits, I’m your host John Dodson.  Join us every Thursday as we uncover the Secrets behind the world’s most fascinating true crime cases.  You can find all episodes of The Secret Sits for free on Apple Podcast, Spotify or where ever you get your podcasts.  And if you like what you are hearing, reach out to us on Instagram and Facebook @The Secret Sits Podcast or on Twitter @SecretSitsPod. Now, on with our story.

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Phillip’s mom Pat became very ill, so Phillip allowed the young girls to stay in the big house with her to keep her company.  One night she fell, so the girls rushed to get their dad, he called an ambulance and she was taken to the hospital.  While at the hospital doctors diagnosed the woman with Parkinson’s and low-grade dementia.  Everyone pitched in to take care of the woman, including Jaycee.  Nancy began sleeping in the house to be closer to Pat during the night, she could no longer walk or use the restroom on her own.  The two girls slept in the blue out building, the one we have been calling the Next Door during this story.  Jaycee is now sleeping in a tent in the back yard.  She gets a new tent every few years as they deteriorate.  Phillip is sleeping on the couch in the big house, or in the spare room with Nancy.  Because of a new law, Phillip’s parole officer comes by more often now, this makes it harder for the group to go on outings.  

A few months after this, Phillip was assigned a new parole officer, when the officer would come to the house Phillip would have Jaycee and the girls go hide in the back yard.  But, he eventually became upset at the parole system and he let the girls sleep in the house, he did not even care if they were still in the house when the officer would show up.  On one visit the officer showed up unexpectedly and he saw one of the girls asleep in one of the bedrooms.  Phillip told Jaycee that next time the officer showed up at the house, she should ask him if he was the man who walked into her daughter’s bedroom.  Phillip was given a different parole officer soon after this, but when the new officer came to the house, Jaycee was in the house caring for Pat, and she asked the man if he had been the officer who walked into her daughter’s room.  The man said no, he collected Phillip’s urine sample and left.  The parole officer visits have escalated to the point where Phillip wants to get a lawyer and get off of parole.  The printing business is not very lucrative at this time and the family does not have a lot of money.  The house was starting to fall apart since Pat had gotten sick.  Pipes were rotting, the porch sink was always backed up and had to be drained, Jaycee hated draining the black smelly water, but if she did not do it, it would back up into the house.  Pat’s dementia has gotten worse, and the only one she is somewhat nice to, is her darling son Phillip.  Even though Pat has never been told exactly who Jaycee is, she knows that Jaycee is the embodiment of what is deeply wrong with her son, something she refuses to see or acknowledge.  

Before Pat had gotten sick, she had only seen Jaycee a couple of times, she had been told her name was Allissa and that she was the sister of some girls Nancy had brought over once.  Jaycee thought that it was sad that Parkinson’s was eating her body, while dementia was taking away her mind, but maybe it is better that she never knew what truly evil things her son had done.

On August 24th, Phillip went to the FBI office in San Francisco and he took both of his young daughters with him.  He thought people would take him more seriously with the girls there and it gave them a chance to get out of the house for a while.  When the trio came back home later that night, everything seemed fine.  Jaycee asked how the trip was and he said that he met with two cops from the Berkeley campus who were interested in what he had presented.  Phillip had made a discovery, he claimed, this discovery was that others could hear what he was speaking in his mind, with the aid of his black box.  Jaycee had learned a valuable lesson during her years with Phillip, do not get excited about anything, then you cannot be disappointed.

The day after this trip, Jaycee was in the backyard office working on a print order, due the following day.  The girls were outside playing and Nancy was in the big house.  Around 5 PM Nancy came running from the house yelling that Phillip had been arrested.  Jaycee told Nancy to calm down, everything would be fine.  Phillip had always told Jaycee that if anything happened they should get a lawyer, so she told Nancy to look in the yellow pages for a lawyer and a bail bondsman.  She knew that Phillip would use his one phone call to call them and tell them what to do.

Nancy and Jaycee told the young girls that Phillip had been arrested, this made the girls anxious, they had no idea why he had been arrested.  Jaycee knew very little about Phillip Garrido’s past, basically she only knew he was on parole for hurting a woman, he had been in prison for this crime for some years before Jaycee had been taken.  After a few hours of sitting around worrying, but all the while trying to remain calm, Phillip walked in the door from the back porch, he was followed by his parole officer.  Nancy ran to Phillip and wrapped him in her arms, tears streaked down her cheeks as a wave of relief washed over everyone in the house.  The parole agent uncuffed Phillip while he was standing in the living room and he told Phillip not to forget to check in the next morning at the Concord parole office, and then the officer just leaves.  After the man left the house, Jaycee also began to cry.  Jaycee’s tears where probably interpreted by everyone around her as tears of joy or relief, but they were tears of anguish, why hadn’t the officer noticed her?  Why had they taken Phillip away, but not rescued her?  And how had Phillip allowed himself to be arrested when he knew all of them relied on him so much?

Phillip had become obsessed with talking about the angels, he was always, angels this and angels that, and this fed into Phillip’s delusions that he was somehow above the law.  Phillip did not believe that it was a coincidence that he got away with taking Jaycee and that he had gotten away with this for so long.  He also pointed out things like the fact that his parole officers could never hold him on anything, all of these things fed into his belief that the angels were on his side.

The group felt an overall sense of relief and they all headed to bed, thinking that the nightmare was over.  The following morning, while Jaycee was still asleep in her tent in the back yard Phillip walked out to the tent and spoke to Jaycee through one of the zipper lined windows, he told her that she needed to get up and get ready because they were all going to the parole office that morning.  Phillip declared that he was tired of the constant harassment by authorities and that he wanted them to see that everything was fine.  Jaycee nervously got ready and then she went and got the girls dressed as well.  Before they left the house, Phillip had Jaycee type a letter for a lawyer based out of Concord.  Phillip intended to leave this letter with the lawyer on their way to the parole office, he wrote in the letter that his project was moving forward and that he would need this lawyer’s services shortly.  Pat was still asleep when they left, buy Phillip said she would be fine.  Jaycee was nervous and asked Phillip what she should say when they were at the office.  He told her that she was allowed to tell them that the two girls were her biological children, that she had consciously had both of the girls with Phillip and that she was aware that he was a registered sex offender.  If they asked anything else, she was not to respond, but instead she should ask for a lawyer.  Reading Jaycee’s nervous face, he told her not to worry, everything would be fine and they would stop for a nice breakfast on their way home from the meeting.  Nancy said nothing during the entire trip.  The girls continued to tell their mother that everything would be ok.  Jaycee knew how meticulous Phillip was about planning things before he did them, so she had to assume he had planned all of this out and that he knew what he was doing.

As the group arrived at the Concord parole office, they all exited their car.  Phillip led the way to the door of the parole office and Jaycee instantly recognized Phillip’s parole officer walking towards them.  The officer’s face read confusion as he saw Phillip had brought minor children to the office.  The officer asked Jaycee, Nancy and the two young girls to follow him to the back, children, they were told, are not permitted in the waiting room.  This makes sense since the lobby is more than likely filled with people on parole for various offences.  As the four females were led away from Phillip, Jaycee looked back at the man, worry flashed in her eyes, which silently asked the man what to do, but all Phillip did was give Jaycee a wink and they disappeared into a private room in the back of the office.  

The officer asked what they were doing there and Jaycee proceeded to tell the parole agent all of the things Phillip had instructed her to relay.  She gave the officer her alias of Allissa, this had been the name she had used since G was born, so she said it naturally at this point.  The man questioned Jaycee, or Allissa, for about 20 minutes more, asking questions like, who are you?  What is your purpose for staying with the Garridos?  After the questions, the man let them go, he gave Jaycee his card as they left the office.  The women left the office through a back door and they sat in their car waiting on Phillip to emerge so they could travel back home.  Nancy was eerily quiet, Jaycee asked her if she had performed ok while talking to the agent, she told her that she had done well, she could not think of anything different Jaycee could have said.  But Nancy was also mystified as to why they had come here today in the first place.  They remained in the car, waiting for Phillip, but Phillip never emerged from the building, instead two parole officers walked out of the building and toward the car.  One officer was the one who had questioned Jaycee, the other was his partner.  As the men approached the car, Jaycee’s anxiety skyrocketed and she asked Nancy what she should do, what should she say?  Nancy said that maybe she should claim to be Phillip’s distant relative from Missouri.  As the two officers arrived at the car, they asked the women to exit the car, Jaycee’s eyes darted across the car to Nancy, what should we do? Her eyes asked.  Nancy did not know what to do.  The officer they had not met with asked the two little girls to sit on the curb with Nancy, while the parole officer who had already interviewed Jaycee asked her to step to the side with him to answer a few more questions.  Jaycee felt like she was in big trouble for something.  The first thing the officer said to her was that she was not the mother of these two young girls, Jaycee looked the man in the face and said, “I gave birth to both of those girls and that makes me their mother!”  The officer told her that Phillip claimed that, she, Jaycee, along with the two young girls were all his brother’s kids.  What?! Jaycee thought, what the hell was Phillip doing?  She suddenly felt a sense of abandonment deep inside of her.

Jaycee went into panic mode, she thought this would result in the officer taking away her little girls.  And so, she began to attempt to dig the way out of this mess for their whole group.  She told the officer that Phillip had lied for her, and that she was running away from an abuse husband and that she did not want anyone to know where she was.  She went on and on and the girls looked frightened at this point, G said she needed to use the bathroom, so the officer told Jaycee and G to follow him to a bathroom.  The trio began walking, while Jaycee continued her story for the officer, in an attempt to be believed and let go from his questioning.  It was then that the officer told her that he was calling Child Protective Services, this spiked Jaycee fear and panic filled the young woman’s eyes.  A female officer came in and the children and Nancy were separated from Jaycee.  Because of the way she was being questioned and sequestered separately from her children, Jaycee felt like she was now the suspect.  She sat in a cold room all by herself, and she imagined a life where she could never see her own children again.  The officer believed that Jaycee had taken the children and fled from somewhere, they told her that if she did not tell them the truth, even about her name, she would be taken to the police station and fingerprinted, and then they would find out who she really was.  Jaycee had no idea what to do at this point, she asked to see Phillip and surprisingly they brought him into the room, in handcuffs.  Jaycee looked at the man and boldly, right in front of the officers, she asked Phillip Gorrido what she should do.  She was so afraid of them taking her children.  Phillip just looked at her with dead pan eyes and told her that she needed to get a lawyer.  The officers then removed him from the room.  They left Jaycee in the room alone for quite a long time, almost an hour, at least that is how it felt to Jaycee as she sat pondering how the rest of her life would work out.  Once Phillip was out of the room, a feeling washed over Jaycee, she was on her own and she needed to do whatever she had to in order for her girls to be safe.  Finally, a female officer entered the room to speak with Jaycee.  

Jaycee had been so conditioned to tell lies based on Phillip and Nancy’s instructions that she could not bring herself to tell her true story.  She asked several times for a lawyer and the female officer repeatedly asked her why she wanted a lawyer if she proclaimed that she had done nothing wrong.  The female officer assured Jaycee that the kids were perfectly fine and that she would see them again soon.  Jaycee was relieved at this, but she looked at the officer and told her that she did not know what to do.  The officer asked her again, “What is your real name?”  Jaycee could not respond.  The officer told Jaycee the old adage, “everything happens for a reason” and that everything would be ok.  The officer walked out of the room and Jaycee was once again, alone.  Jaycee sat in the room by herself for a long time, she made several trips to the restroom, and when the female officer came back, she announced that Phillip had confessed to everything.  She stated “He confessed to kidnapping you several years ago.”  She then asked, once again, for Allissa’s real name, she also aske how old she had been when she was kidnapped.  

Jaycee slowly began to speak, I was eleven when I was taken, I am now 29-years-old.  The officer’s face registered shock, she once again asked for her real name, but the words could not escape Jaycee’s mouth.  She then explained to the officer that she was not trying to be difficult, but she had not uttered her real name in 18 years.  She told the woman that she could write it down, and with a shaky had she wrote on a small piece of paper, J-A-Y-C-E-E-L-E-E-D-U-G-A-R-D.

And in that moment, as the letter materialized on the page, it was as if a 19-year-old spell had been broken, in that moment Jaycee remembered what it felt like to be free, exhausted and completely alive all at the same time.  The officer asked her to write down her date of birth and her mother’s name.  Her mother, a flash of memories went through Jaycee’s mind, and her eyes shot to the officer, “I can see my mother?” she asked the officer and the officer told her yes.

After the officers had her true name, they quickly reunited Jaycee with her girls, this brough relief and joy to Jaycee, there were so many emotions all happening at once.  They moved Jaycee and the girls to the Concord police station, where they could make them more comfortable.  

While at the police station, Jaycee was given a room to wait in, while the girls were entertained by the staff in the front office.  The officers felt that Jaycee probably needed time to herself, which is why they were separated, officers came and went asking questions about portions of her story.  During one of these visits, Jaycee was introduced to two officers named Todd and Beth.  Todd and Beth asked if there was anything they could do for her and at first, Jaycee told them no, but then she reconsidered her answer.  She could hear G in the next room telling anyone who would listen that she was worried about her pet hermit crabs back at home, so Jaycee asked Todd if someone could go get her crabs from the house and bring them to her, Todd said that he would see what he could do.  As Todd and Beth left the room and Jaycee was alone again, she could not hold back the tears, which began to flow like a waterfall, unstoppable, even if she tried.

The next thing to happen was a phone call with two officers from the El Dorado County Sheriff’s office.  This was an overly anticipated phone call, for Jaycee to talk to her mom.  Leading up to the call, Jaycee could not eat anything that was offered to her and she only took small sips from her Dr. Pepper, her stomach was doing summersaults.  Before the call, the officers with Jaycee asked if she had any questions, she could only think of one, “Is my mom still with my stepfather, Carl?”  The officers told her that her mother had separated from Carl years ago and they no longer lived together.  This relieved a small portion of her anxiety.  The phone sat on the table in front of Jaycee and as it rang, she felt as if her tong was welded to the roof of her mouth, it did not want to cooperate.

The first place they attempted to call was her mother’s house, the phone rang and rang and just as the officers were about to hang up and try a different number, the line picked up and a female voice appeared on the other end, “Hello?”  The officers ask to speak to Jaycee’s mother and the female on the phone says that she is at work, they can contact her there.  The officers asked if they were speaking to Terry’s other daughter and she answered “Yes”.  Jaycee could not believe that she could hear her little sister’s voice, her baby sister, who she had not seen since she still slept in a crib.  The police hung up the call after explaining the situation to Jaycee’s little sister Shayna, and then they placed a call to Terry’s workplace.  Terry was put on the phone with Jaycee and Jaycee could not even comprehend or remember what she said to her mother during this call.  At the end of the call Jaycee said to her mother, “Come quick!” and she could hear her mother on the other end of the phone screaming, “My daughter has been found!” over and over, the two women then said to each other, “I love you!” And then the call ended.

Officer Todd arranged for Jaycee and her two girls to stay at a hotel that night, and as they left the station headed to their refuge for the evening, they passed by the horde of news vans which had begun to show up at the CPD offices.  As they arrived at the hotel, officer Beth showed up with new pajamas for the girls, along with some toiletries.  Todd pulled Jaycee aside and told her that the girls were not eating any food, because they had not seen her eat anything.  In the whirlwind of the day, food had been the last thing on her mind, but she announced that she was hungry, and they decided on enchiladas for dinner.  As they sat to eat, Jaycee could only make herself eat a few bites, but this was enough to spur on her children to eat their meals.  The officers left the three ladies at the hotel for the evening, but on their way out, officers Beth and Todd encouraged Jaycee to talk to the small girls about the truth of their circumstances, so they could understand what was happening.  

The girls all sat on the big bed in their hotel room and Jaycee spoke to her children about her truth, for the very first time.  She explained that their father was responsible for many things and the girls listened intently.  Jaycee told them that she did not know where their lives would go from here, but she promised that she would make every effort to make the right decisions for their future together no matter what, she told the girls that she would never leave them.

There was a knock at the hotel room door, the victim advocates who had been assigned to there case had arrived.  They had stopped by just for an introduction, they then just as quickly left to give them back their privacy.  Jaycee spent the night worried about seeing her mom the next day and she was nervous about meeting her baby sister, seemingly for the first time.  The following morning, she had a sinus headache due to her crying all night.  Jaycee was riddled with hypothetical questions, like: What if my mom does not accept the girls?  What if my mom hates me?  Could I have tried harder to leave Phillip?  Her world was upside down and she did not know how to handle it.  Thoughts creeped into Jaycee’s head; would she be able to keep her children safe in the outside world?  Phillip had always been there to protect them before, now it was all up to her.

After her long and arduous night, morning finally broke, Jaycee’s head still swirled with questions and anticipation.  The officers arrived at her room and they told her that her aunt and sister had arrived with her mother.  Jaycee, reminded herself to breath.  FBI agents had been brought in on the case and they were there to help facilitate the reunion.  They asked if she wanted to meet with her mother alone at first, Jaycee reminded herself to breath.  She agreed, she would meet with her mother first, then they could bring the girls in.  They traveled downstairs via the elevator and she was escorted to the room her mother was in, and Jaycee reminded herself to breath.  As she stepped to the threshold of the door to the room that held her mother, she froze and stood there wide eyed, after a moment, she finally took a slow deep breath in and she walked through the door.

Jaycee knew the woman instantly, she was right there in front of her, for the longest time, she had faded from her memory, at times she could not even remember what her mom looked like.  But there she stood; arms open wide.  Jaycee walked to her mother, Terry was smiling so wide, while tears flowed down her face, she enveloped her daughter in her arms and in that moment, Jaycee felt safe and whole once again.  She told her mom that she still smelled the same as she remembered, her scent was like a distant memory, she could not keep hold of.

Terry pulled back from the hug, so she could look her long lost daughter in the eyes and she said, “I knew I would see you again.  Do you remember when we used to sit outside on the porch swing and talk about the moon as it rose high in the sky?  Well, when you were taken from me, I used the moon to talk to you.  I’ve been talking to you for so long.  The other night the moon was full and bright and I asked the moon, okay, where are you, Jaycee?  The next day I get the call that you have been found.”  Jaycee looks at her mother and says that she remembers that moon too, she was walking to her tent in the backyard and for some reason she was compelled to look up at the moon and she stood and stared at it for several minutes.  The two women hugged again, the kind of deep hug you can feel all through your soul and then they sat down to catch up on their years apart.

Jaycee soon began her new life as a free woman, she learned to drive, she was free to say she had a family, and she had her daughters.  She was rebuilding relationships with her mother, sister and aunt, as well as with more distant relatives and old friends. She now knew more people than she had in her entire life, and she considered some as close friends.  The realization came to her that her mental and verbal abuse had been just as damaging as any physical abuse and that it could take even longer to heal.  She was matched with a psychologist who took a unique approach to her therapy, Jaycee believes this is why she is making such amazing progress.  Her therapist is helping her learn to speak up for herself, something she could not do around Phillip.  She can make decisions for herself and her girls, she does not always make the right choice, she feels, but at least she can make the choice and learn from it if it was the wrong choice to make.  One example of this was when Jaycee decided to attend a friend’s birthday campout at Sky Park.  She was warned about paparazzi and reporters, but she is headstrong and she wanted the girls to see the Perseid meteor shower in the vast darkness of the campgrounds.  They had an amazing time under the blanket of stars, they laid on blankets staring up at the wonderous night sky and they watched the streaks of light flash across the dark sky.  They played in the lake and eat pie for dinner and hamburgers for dessert.  It was a great time and they had no idea that their privacy had been violated, until they returned home.  When they returned from the trip, they found out that someone had been out in the woods taking pictures, which they then printed.  Jaycee felt sad and embarrassed, she had inadvertently put her girls back in the public eye without even knowing it.  By this time Jaycee had a PR manager named Nancy Seltzer and she was able to get the children’s faces blurred in the tabloid photos.  All Jaycee wanted for her girls was the anonymity and freedom they deserved.  This incident made her feel like she could not be trusted to make decisions, but after a few therapy sessions she began to realize that the decision she had made was fine, if she never took the girls out in public simply due to fear, then they were still not free.

Jaycee’s little sister Shayna was the one to teach her to drive, ironic, she thought.  But Shayna was the first one to bring it up, one day she just said, come on, let’s go for a drive.  She was an awesome teacher; she was relaxed and calm.  Jaycee, on the other hand was shaking and scared to death.  She learned to drive on a winding stretch of road and after receiving her driver’s license, a complete stranger gifted her a brand-new car.  

Remember when G had asked about her crabs and that she wanted them to be brought to the station?  Well officer Todd called the police task force that was processing the Girrado house and told one of the officers where to locate the crabs.  This officer took the crabs, inside their 10-gallon tank, and transported them to the hotel where the girls had been.  This officer and officer Todd then used a luggage cart and a towel to smuggle the crabs into the hotel room.  G dubbed the men Royal Crab Carrier One and Royal Crab Carrier Two right there on the spot.  Officer Beth went to the house and took care of Jaycee’s animals, as she requested, 6 cats were rescued from the property, two adult cats and 4 kittens, the adult cats, Peaches and Lily were strays that Jaycee fed.  They also looked for homes to place the two dogs in.  The girls wanted to keep the kittens, so Jaycee asked Officer Beth if she could find homes to adopt the two adult cats, which she easily did, she adopted Peaches herself and one of her close friends adopted Lily, both cats began living happy and carefree lives indoors.  Angel’s parakeet was also returned to her and she has had him ever since.  

Police called an ambulance for Pat and she was taken away and was being cared for by professionals.  

After some time had passed, Jaycee felt that she needed to see Nancy again, she had her own reasons, one of the biggest reasons being closure. She sat across from the woman in a little white room, she was nervous thinking about how she had felt when she saw her mother, nervous and excited, but she did not feel this way as she sat across from Nancy, a woman she had known longer than she had known her own mother.  As she sat across from Nancy, Jaycee felt nothing.  There was no real, true relationship there, it had all been based on a lie, ready to crumble like a house of cards with one solid blow.  During this meeting, Nancy kept calling her Allissa, but she would stop her and say, “No, my name is Jaycee.”  Nancy apologized and said that it was hard for her to remember, she would call her Allissa again and Jaycee would once again stop her and correct her.  Nancy asked if the girls ever thought about her or asked about her, Jaycee did not know what to say, so she looked down at her lap, then she looked back up at Nancy’s face, “They don’t, do they?” Nancy sniffled out; her eyes red and swollen with tears.  Jaycee told her that, that was not really the issue right now, she told Nancy that as the girls aged, IF, they wished to contact her, she would not stand in their way, but that was not the issue right now.  Jaycee told Nancy that Phillip needed to come clean with the true story, he was portraying himself in an untrue light.  He had used this same con game on his first victim and then again on Katie Calloway, the woman he was in prison for before he had kidnapped Jaycee.  Nancy said she was afraid that Jaycee hated her for what she had done, Jaycee told the woman that no she did not hate her for what she had done, simply because she chose not to pollute her own body with hate, but what she and Phillip had done to her and her family was unforgivable.  Nancy said that she hoped Jaycee’s mother could forgive her someday, Jaycee simply said, “I wouldn’t hold out for that.”  Nancy said she still loved Phillip and Jaycee gave the woman some advice, she told Nancy that she needed to do what was best for herself now, because Phillip was going to be in jail for the rest of his life.  She told the woman to take care of herself and she told her good-bye for the last time and then she stood up and walked back out of the door.

Jaycee’s aunt traveled back home to make preparations for their return, but Jaycee made a big decision, she did not want to move back to the LA area with her children, she had enjoyed the small town she had been hidden away in by the FBI.  The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children helped her get enough money to obtain a new home for her family, a beautiful old farmhouse, it was private and there was plenty of room for the girls to play outside and there were no neighbors.  As the small family transitioned to their new home, one female FBI agent stayed with them, she made the three girls feel safe and protected, but she could only stay for so long, when she left, she was missed by everyone in the house.

They slowly learned how to be a family together in their farmhouse.  No one knew who Jaycee or her children were and the media was constantly reaching out for interviews or photos, Jaycee had not done interviews as a way to keep her anonymity, but she was told if she did not relent at some point, they would find her and get the photos they wanted.  So Jaycee contacted her lawyer and signed a deal with People magazine, she offered them one photo and one statement.  

The day of the photo shoot arrived and everything raced by in a flash, it was uncomfortable and the photographer attempted to get photos which had not been agreed to, he asked for a photo with the girls and Jaycee told him that was not part of the deal.  She eventually relented and allowed one photo to be taken of her with the girls, their backs to the cameras.  After the People magazine story was published, Jaycee hired a public relations person and, once again, tried to stay out of the lime light.

Phillip and Nancy Garrido are now in prison for the rest of their lives.  Neither one of these monsters ever took responsibilities for their own actions.  The inspector general took full responsibility for the mistakes that were made by law enforcement.  Jaycee started a foundation called The Just Ask Yourself to Care group, JAYC for short.  This foundation aims to reunite families and influence even small changes in their communities.  Their mantra is “I promise to live with integrity, to have compassion for all living things, to be aware of my surroundings and to just ask myself to care!”  The purpose of this group is to build empathy, positive leadership, and connection among the students within the community at large.  Jaycee stated, “We may not be able to change the very structures that support such evil, but I am committed to continuing my message of “Just Ask Yourself to Care” There is no reason for such laziness in our society.  No child, animal, or adult on this planet should be made to feel unsafe in this world we all share.”