Police got Jaycee Dugard tip 17 years ago

MARTINEZ, Calif., Oct. 6 (UPI) -- Police in a California county acknowledge they got a tip on the whereabouts of Jaycee Dugard a year after she was kidnapped -- 17 years before she was found.

The anonymous tip came from a man who said he had seen a girl who looked like Dugard examining a poster about her abduction at a gas station near Antioch, Calif., The San Francisco Chronicle reported. The caller said the girl left in a yellow van.

Dugard, now 29, was found in Antioch earlier this year. Philip Garrido and his wife, Nancy, have been charged with kidnapping her and holding her prisoner for 18 years at their compound in Antioch, where she bore two children by Garrido.

Investigators found a yellow van at the compound.

Capt. Dan Terry of the Contra Costa Sheriff's Office said a deputy went to the gas station but found neither the girl nor the van.

Tips like that are common in highly publicized cases, Terry said.

Years later, in 2006, a neighbor called the sheriff's office and reported that "little girls and women" were living in the back of Garrido's property. Garrido was warned about potential code violations.