Page 4 World&Nation Kidnapped girl found PLACERVILLE, Calif. (AP) and authorities said she was with – Joyous, miraculous news that a Garrido during the kidnapping in little girl kidnapped nearly two South Lake Tahoe. decades ago was found alive gave Garrido was on lifetime parole way Thursday to the horrifying and his arrest raises questions details of how police say she has about how closely parolees are lived all those years: kept by a con- monitored. But Kollar said a parole victed rapist in his backyard as a officer who had visited Garrido’s sex slave and forced to bear two of house previously had not noticed his children. anything amiss – the compound Jaycee Lee Dugard, who was 11 was well concealed by shrubs, garin 1991 when she was snatched bage cans and a tarp. from her school bus stop, was “You can’t see over the fence locked away from the outside world with the shrubbery and the trees. behind a series of fences, sheds You can’t see the structures,” Kollar and tents in the back of a suburban said. home. Neighbor Helen Boyer, 78, Her abductor, investigators said, described the Garridos as nice and raped her for years and fathered friendly and said they cared for two children with her, the first Phillip Garrido’s elderly mother. when Jaycee was about 14. Those “If I needed something, they children, both girls now 11 and 15, would be the first I would call on,” also were kept hidden away in the Boyer said. backyard compound. The case broke after Garrido “None of the children have ever was spotted Tuesday with two been to school, children as he they’ve never been “They were kept tried to enter to a doctor,” El the University in complete Dorado County of California, isolation.” Undersheriff Fred Berkeley, campus Fred Kollar, El Dorado to hand out reliKollar said. “They were kept in comCounty Undersheriff gious literature. plete isolation in The officers said this compound.” he was acting Dugard, now 29, appeared at a suspiciously toward the children. parole office Wednesday with her They questioned him and did a children and the couple accused of background check, determining kidnapping her. She was reunited he was a parolee, and informed his Thursday with her mother, but the parole officer. family was also learning that their Garrido was ordered to appear smiling, blue-eyed, blonde ponyfor a parole meeting and arrived tailed little girl had spent most of Wednesday with Dugard, who her life in captivity. identified herself as “Allissa,” his “She was in good health, but wife and two children. During living in a backyard for the past 18 questioning, corrections officials years does take its toll,” Kollar said. said he admitted kidnapping The backyard compound had Dugard. Investigators said he did electricity from extension cords not yet have an attorney. and a rudimentary outhouse and Authorities said they do not shower, “as if you were camping,” know if Garrido also abused his Kollar said. daughters, but they are investigatConvicted sex offender Phillip ing. Garrido, 58, was being held for Dugard’s stepfather, who witinvestigation of various kidnapping nessed her abduction and was a and sex charges. His wife, Nancy longtime suspect in the case, said Garrido, 54, was also arrested, he was overwhelmed by the news after doing everything he could to help find her. “It broke my marriage up. I’ve gone through hell, I mean I’m a suspect up until yesterday,” a tearful Carl Probyn, 60, told The Associated Press at his home in Orange, Calif. Garrido’s compound was located in Antioch, a city of 100,000 about 170 miles from her family’s home in South Lake Tahoe. The house was cordoned off with police tape as it was searched by FBI agents and the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Department. People who knew Garrido said he became increasingly fanatic about his religious beliefs in recent years, sometimes breaking out into song and claiming that God spoke to him through a box. “In the last couple years he started getting into this strange religious stuff. We kind of felt sorry for him,” said Tim Allen, president of East County Glass and Window Inc. in Pittsburgh, who bought business cards and letterhead from Garrido’s printing business for the last decade. Three times in recent years, Garrido arrived at Allen’s showroom with two “cute little blond girls” in tow, he said. In April 2008, Garrido registered a corporation called Gods Desire at his home address, according the California Secretary of State. During recent visits to the showroom, Garrido would talk about quitting the printing business to preach full time and gave the impression he was setting up a church, Allen said. “He rambled. It made no sense,” he said. Garrido would talk about holding events at UC Berkeley and mentioned the names of important people as if he knew them. Allen said he had no inkling of Garrido’s criminal record. “We never thought anything bad about the guy,” Allen said. “He was just kind of nutty.” Tax Free Textbooks Friday, Aug. 28, 2009 Problem cancels moon rocket test firing in Utah PROMONTORY, Utah (AP) – A mechanical failure forced a NASA contractor on Thursday to call off the first test firing of the main part of NASA’s powerful new moon rocket. The test wasn’t immediately rescheduled as officials scrambled to learn the root cause of the failure. Alliant Techsystems Inc. called off the rocket burn with just 20 seconds left on the countdown clock. Operators cited failure of a power unit that drives hydraulic tilt controls for the rocket’s nozzle. The rocket was anchored to the ground in a horizontal position for the test. It was a setback for a carefully staged, $75 million event that drew thousands of onlookers. Alliant hoped the routine test would prove the performance of a new program for space exploration that, like the test rocket, may not fly because of NASA budget problems. There was no indication anything was wrong with the rocket itself, which packs 1 million pounds of chemical propellant, enough to boost a 321-foot-long vehicle 190,000 feet into the atmosphere. At a news conference in Utah, officials said the power unit for the nozzle controls, which steer a rocket in flight, was robbed of fuel, apparently because of a faulty valve. That had potential implications for the space shuttle, which uses a nearly identical system. Officials in Utah notified their counterparts at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where NASA has had to twice delay the launch of Discovery for other reasons. The Ares test problem could introduce a new delay in the launch of Discovery, previously set back because of weather and again because of a problem with a different shuttle fuel valve. Shuttle managers said Thursday they will examine what went wrong with Ares and decide by early Friday whether to go ahead with a launch set for 11:59 p.m. EDT Friday. In Utah, Alliant executives said their valve problem had never before emerged to scrub a rocket’s test firing. Engineers could have fired the rocket anyway, but they halted the two-minute burn because they wouldn’t have been able to test the agility of the rocket nozzle. CHARLIE PRECOURT, FORMER NASA ASTRONAUT, vice president and general manager of ATK Space Launch Systems, right, answers a question during a news conference, following an equipment failure. AP photo