COUNTYWIDE : Missing Girl Focus of Candlelight Walk

The Adam Walsh Child Resource Center will hold a “Candlelight Walk of Hope” on Thursday for Jaycee Lee Dugard, an 11-year-old South Lake Tahoe girl originally from Orange County who was abducted while walking to her school bus June 10.

The vigil, which will include friends and relatives of the girl, will mark four months since Jaycee disappeared. A similar event was held in South Lake Tahoe in July, and a rummage sale in Orange County raised funds for the search.

“It’s for support,” said Dennis Bode, a friend of Jaycee’s family who is organizing the vigil with the Adam Walsh Center. “It’s for awareness. . . . A lot of people figure that when they don’t hear it in the media for a while, she must have been found.”

The vigil will start at 7 p.m. at the Adam Walsh Center, 7812 Westminster Blvd., in Westminster, and participants will walk to the Westminster Civic Center. Participants are asked to bring a candle. Bode said he expects about 200 people at the vigil.

Jaycee, originally from Garden Grove, was abducted as she walked to a school bus a quarter of a mile from her home. Her stepfather, Carl Probyn, was working in the garage and saw a car, described as a gray, two-door Mercury Zephyr or similar vehicle, drive past the house. The car made a U-turn and someone, possibly a woman, reached out of the car and pulled Jaycee inside.

Jaycee’s family moved to South Lake Tahoe from Garden Grove a few months before she was kidnaped. Since she was abducted, more than 90,000 posters of the blond, blue-eyed girl have been distributed in California. Most recently, her case was featured on “Missing/Reward,” a nationally syndicated television show.

For information about the vigil, call (714) 898-4802.

Anyone with information about Jaycee’s abduction should call the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Department at (916) 573-3022, the Interstate Assn. for Stolen Children at (800) 468-3545 or the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children at (800) 843-5678.