Girl Missing From the South Lake Tahoe Area for 18 Years Possibly Surfaces in Concord

A girl missing from the South Lake Tahoe area for 18 years might be alive and reunited with family this week.

Photo: Girl Missing From the South Lake Tahoe Area for 18 Years Possibly Surfaces in Concord

A woman who has been missing from her South Lake Tahoe home for 18 years may have surfaced in Concord, according to Sacramento-area news reports and her stepfather.

Jaycee Dugard, who would be 29 years old today, went missing in Meyers, in El Dorado County, on June 10, 1991 in an apparent abduction. For nearly 20 years, the case was cold and investigators struggled to make headway into what might have happened to Dugard, even with national talk shows like "Geraldo" intermittently bringing attention back to the disappearance.

Few details were available about the possible reappearance of Dugard. The El Dorado County Sheriff's Department plans to hold a press conference on the case later today, San Jose Mercury News reports.

Carl Probyn, Jaycee's stepfather, said his wife and daughter were flying to Northern California to meet the woman who walked into a Bay Area police station and said she was Dugard, who went missing on June 10, 1991.

Probyn told The Bee this morning that his wife, Terry, spoke with the young woman by phone Wednesday night, and both believe she is Dugard.

The Probyns, who are separated, live in Southern California, Carl in Orange County and Terry in Riverside. Terry Probyn and their daughter, Shayna, 19, boarded a 6 a.m. flight to the Bay Area to meet with the young woman, Carl Probyn said.

Probyn said he is elated.

"I think it is definitely her," said Probyn, a 60-year-old Orange County wallpaper contractor. "I'm just pleased that she is alive and well," reports Sacramento Bee.

The mother, Terry Probyn, is en route to the Bay Area to meet the woman. Dugard’s step father, Carl Probyn, told CBS-13 in Sacramento they believe the woman is their daughter not seen since 1991.

During that conversation, FBI agents told Mrs. Probyn that they “had Jaycee and the people responsible,” according to her husband.

Carl Probyn watched as the child, then 11 years old, was snatched away by two people in a car as the child walked from the school bus stop to the family’s home in South Lake Tahoe.

The couple now lives in Riverside County, KCBS reports.