Before the Kidnapping
The kidnapping itself occurred in the little town of Meyers, not far from South Lake Tahoe in the state of California. The Dugard family had moved to Meyers less than a year earlier from the relatively large city of Arcadia, California, not far from Los Angeles. Arcadia boasts a population of over 50,000 people, while Meyers is just a little town of around 3,000 inhabitants, so the switch was quite an abrupt one for Jaycee and her family.
Source: abcnews.go.com
In a tragic example of irony, Jaycee’s mother and stepfather decided to move to the area for safety reasons, believing that the small rural community would be a more secure place to raise a family. Their apartment in Orange County had been broken into, and the family decided that a move is needed to help them all feel a little safer. That fateful decision would prove to be life-changing in ways they could never have imagined.