Oprah Magazine
Jaycee's case wasn't cracked using DNA testing or satellite surveillance. Women's intuition helped facilitate her rescue.
Without the help of police officer Allison Jacobs and police specialist Lisa Campbell, employees at the University of California, Berkeley, Jaycee would likely still be among the missing.
Moments after Garrido walked into Lisa's office on August 24, 2009, Lisa says she sensed something wasn't right. Garrido began talking about an event he wanted to host on campus, and when Lisa glanced up from her computer, she noticed two young girls standing outside the office door.
"I said, 'Whose children are these?' He says, 'They're mine.' I said: "Hi, girls. How are you? Come on in,'" she says. "They were pretty girls, but they just weren't animated. They weren't interactive. It was a nonverbal communication. It was just as though they were props."
Lisa asked Garrido to come back the following day to discuss his event, but she says she really just wanted more time to determine what was going on between this man and two girls.
The next day, she told Allison about Garrido and explained her gut reaction. "I said: 'Ally, this guy is in my office. He's got these two young girls. Something's not right,'" she says. "At that point, she went to do her criminal background [check] on him."
The results were shocking. Allison says Garrido's rap sheet was longer than she could have imagined. She discovered he was on parole for rape and was a registered sex offender.
Later that day, Garrido returned with the two girls. This time, Allison sat in on his meeting with Lisa so her co-worker wouldn't have to be alone with him. While he talked, Lisa says she studied the children.
"I'm looking at the 11-year-old, who is staring at me unlike any other stare I've ever had at me by a child in my life," she says. "You can usually tell what their eyes are saying, and they're very animated with their eyes. ... I'm not getting any kind of read from her at all."
Lisa and Allison let Garrido leave with the girls because they didn't have anything to arrest him for, but they didn't stop searching for evidence of a crime. Allison called Garrido's parole officer to tell him about their interactions with his parolee.
"When I got to the point of his two girls, his two daughters, he says, 'He doesn't have any daughters,'" Allison says. "My heart just fell down into my stomach. Here I am thinking: 'Did we just let someone go who kidnapped these kids? What did I do wrong?'"
Soon after that phone call, police officers followed up on Lisa and Allison's report and discovered Jaycee and her true identity. When Garrido's parole office called Allison to share the exciting developments, she says she never imagined it would become an international news story. "I said: 'Cool. That's great,'" she says. "I'm glad that I helped this family, and I just left it at that. I didn't think it was going to turn into what it's turned into."
If there's one lesson everyone should take away from their story, Lisa says it's to listen to your inner voice. "I think we're one of the only species that ignores the instinct that we have," she says. "Don't be afraid to question. You can always apologize if you're wrong. Take that extra step."
Lisa also encourages everyday citizens to help make policing a community effort. "We need the eyes and ears of the community to get the information to the police," she says. "The police are the resource that enforces the law, and we take the next step, but [there] was the day when the nosy neighbor really had a role."
To help find more children like Jaycee, Lisa says people should take a moment out of their busy lives to get to know their neighbors, be aware of their surroundings and pay attention to things that are out of the ordinary in their communities.
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