Girls Found Unhurt

It is a parent’s worst nightmare: a missing child. And for three days, the parents of Genevieve “Genna” Pebley, 12, and Lurana Mohler, 13, lived with that fear.

But Sunday evening brought a happy ending and a tearful reunion with their daughters.

“I’m much better now,” said Janiece Mohler. “My daughter’s home.”

The two girls, along with an older friend, were found by police in Huntington Beach on Sunday night, Brea Police Lt. Douglas Dickerson said.

Genna Pebley and Lurana Mohler were turned over to their parents, Dickerson said.

Huntington Beach police were still trying to contact the parents or guardians of the third girl, identified as 15-year-old Katia Bawdon, Dickerson said.

“The good news is that they are all safe,” Dickerson said. He gave no details about where the girls stayed while they were missing.

Mohler had called her family about 4 p.m. Sunday from a convenience store in Huntington Beach, asking to come home.

Pebley and Mohler, along with Bawdon, had cut classes at Brea Junior High School Thursday morning, Brea Sgt. Tom Flenniken said at a news conference Sunday.

They were last seen boarding a bus at Brea Mall around 2 p.m. Thursday. Their worried parents reported them missing at 5 p.m. when they did not return from school.

Later Thursday, Lars and Janiece Mohler got a call from a friend of their daughter’s saying that Lurana had phoned about 10 p.m. to say that the three were running away but didn’t know what they would be doing.

Apparently, Bawdon, a habitual runaway, was the instigator in urging the other two girls to leave school, Flenniken said. The three girls apparently stowed their backpacks at school, taking nothing with them except a few dollars.

There was no suspicion of foul play, Flenniken said, though police had requested the girls’ dental records just in case.

But that had not eased the concern of their families, who had frantically printed hundreds of fliers with the girls’ pictures. Their faces stared down from dozen of places across town, part of an exhaustive effort by friends and family to locate them.

“They’re just a little too cute and too young to be out there,” Dana Andersen, Lurana’s godfather, had said earlier Sunday. “We’re all worried sick. I think it might be a little bit of adolescent rebellion without really thinking of the possibility of the problems.”

Pebley’s parents in particular were concerned because Genna had left without any of the medicine she needed daily to control epilepsy.

By Sunday’s afternoon news conference, family members were exhausted from anxiety.

“It’s time to come home,” Lars Mohler pleaded in a television interview, as his 9-year-old son, Jay, added his own message for his sister: “If she’s listening, I want her to come home ‘cause I miss her like heck.”

*

Times staff writer Davan Maharaj contributed to this report.

Tini Tran may be reached at (714) 966-7700. Her e-mail address is tini.tran@latimes.com