SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, CA - June 11, 1991, Terri Probyn walked out of a South Lake Tahoe church to meet the media for the first time.
Choking back tears, she spoke into the cameras, reaching out, she hoped, to her daughter who had been kidnapped near her home the day before.

"Jaycee, if you're out there and can here me," she said, "you know I love you and I want you to come home soon."

We all cried a little that day almost 20 years ago, as Terri Probyn struggled with the unthinkable.

We all hugged our own kids a little closer, too, as she gave voice to every parent's worst fears.

If it could happen to her, to her daughter, a bright, pretty 11 year old, snatched in broad daylight on a South Lake Tahoe street, gone with out a trace, we had to face the awful truth, it could happen to anyone.

Many stood with Terri Probyn in the days, weeks, month and years that followed. Some felt they had to do something, anything and so volunteers joined her efforts to keep Jaycee's name and face before the public.

There were candle light vigils and always there talk, even a song of hope. "Jaycee, the love we have will shelter you wherever you may be," went the lyrics.

But even as we held that fading hope, deep inside we knew these stories rarely have a happy ending.

The passing years with thousands of leads that went nowhere, only seemed to reinforce that sad conclusion. In time Jaycee Dugard became just one of a list of children taken from us, now dead or assumed to be.

Eighteen years after she disappeared, the shock of her discovery that she was alive, held prisoner 18 years by a sexual predator, brought shared surprise, relief, and concern for what she had endured.

Thje news was followed weeks later with the first glimpse of her, a picture spread in People magazine.
Again surprise and some shared tears. People we approached with a copy of that cover gasped in surprise. The sight of a smiling young woman was more than anyone could have hoped.

"S\It's amazing,," one said. "She's beautiful. It makes me want to cry."

People once again took to the streets of South Lake Tahoe in a parade in her name, but this time in celebration, draped in pink, her favorite color.

Finally now we can enjoy a quiet moment of celebration at the close of the criminal case against those who took her and raped her and kept her.

But any satisfaction should be tempered by the knowledge that there is nothing unique in Philip Garrido's evil sickness and other mothers still wait.

Liza Ackerman Stewart of Fallon has waited 28 years. Her son, Tony Franko, disappeared one morning in Lemmon Valley, like Jaycee on his way to school.

Today she will tell anyone who asks that she shared in the joy and relief in Jaycee's return.

She will also tell you it continues to inspire and fuel her hope that her only son will also some day return.

That mixture of hope and fear is what Jaycee Dugard leaves us.