COBB, Calif. – A multiagency search on Friday scoured the Cobb area in an effort to locate a girl who is believed to have run away from home the previous morning.
Jenica Frederick, 12, was last seen at about 7 a.m. or 8 a.m. Thursday at her home on St. Helena Drive in Cobb, as she was getting ready to catch the school bus to school, according to sheriff’s officials.
However, sheriff’s officials said the girl did not ride the bus or attend school at Cobb Mountain Elementary that day.
“Nothing suggests at this point that she’s been abducted. This is a ‘voluntary’ missing,” said Sgt. John Gregore of the Lake County Sheriff’s Office. “She ran away on her own. But that can always change in a heartbeat. So we definitely treat this with that risk. She’s a 12-year-old girl out there on her own.”
Jenica is a Caucasian female, 4 feet, 9 inches tall, 116 pounds, with short brown hair, blue eyes and a fair complexion. When she was last seen she was wearing dark blue or black jeans, a green plaid jacket, a pink backpack that looked like it was full of items and a lot of colored bracelets, sheriff’s officials reported.
The girl was reportedly distraught over a recent “behavioral incident” at home, according to the sheriff’s report.
On Friday, search teams used the Pine Summit Pool in Cobb as a base camp as the search for the girl continued.
When she didn’t come home on Thursday night, the search began, with Lake County Search and Rescue and sheriff’s deputies conducting a ground search of the Cobb-Anderson Springs area, said Gregore, who was overseeing base camp operations on Friday.
Gregore said the search expanded on Friday to include resources and personnel from search and rescue teams from Marin, Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino counties, as well as the California Highway Patrol.
He said 20 law enforcement officers, 64 volunteers, four search and rescue dogs and CHP helicopters had been involved as of 2 p.m. Friday.
The sheriff’s office has experienced search teams and search and rescue coordinators who were on the job for hours; one such volunteer told this reporter on Friday that he was leaving after having spent 14 hours working the communication center.
“The plan right now is to backtrack everything we hit in the daytime,” said Gregore. “Our law enforcement officers are trying to find leads to see if she is here somewhere. And if she is confirmed out of this area we will change our game plan to Kit’s Corner, or Lakeport, or Sonoma, or somewhere else. We will search that area.”
He said they didn’t know where Jenica may have been headed, whether into the woods or some other location.
A three- to four-square-mile search perimeter was established, said Gregore, with teams covering all the basic trails, but not moving deep into the woods.
“Generally with something like this we are not talking experienced hiker, a 12-year-old girl is going to get tired. She doesn’t have a lot of experience hiking,” he said.
On Friday morning, officials received information that Jenica had been seen walking along Highway 175 northbound toward Red Hills Road on Thursday morning, Gregore said.
He said his main focus was to help the search teams by following the leads in an effort to develop an accurate picture of where the girl may have gone.
Gregore said he and others at the base camp were staying in touch with the girl’s distraught parents to keep them informed of the search’s progression.
He said the family was willing to do whatever was required, noting that in such cases it can be difficult for parents to turn the matter over to law enforcement.
“Anybody who has any kind of information should call the Lake County Sheriff’s office at 707-263-2690,” said Gregore. “We are going to follow up on leads. She is not in trouble with law enforcement. We just want to make sure that she’s OK.”
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