For Eighteen Years I Was a Prisoner

Jaycee Dugard starts her story, A Stolen Life: “In the summer of 1991 I was a normal kid. I did normal things. I had friends and a mother who loved me. I was just like you. Until the day my life was stolen” (Dugard Cover). Dugard wrote her book because she was trying to get over the overwhelming confusion she felt during the years she was taken. She wanted to slowly unravel the damage that was done to her and her precious family. Her childhood starts with an unforgettable abduction but ends with survival, healing, and warmth.

Jaycee Dugard lived in a household with her supportive mother, careless stepfather, Carl, and her eighteen month old sister, Shayna. She was born on May 3, 1980 in Anaheim, California. Eleven years later, “it is an ordinary Monday morning school day. [She] has woken up early this morning of June 10, 1991 (Dugard 1). Dugard’s mother forgot to come kiss her goodbye before she left for work, so she started to walk to school because Carl has started to make her walk by herself since she is “grown-up” (Dugard 6). As Dugard walked to her bus stop, she was stopped by a stranger in a car and “he leans slightly out of his car and starts to ask [her] for directions. His hand shoots out of the window so fast [she] barely registers that he has something black in his hand” (Dugard 9) He and his wife, Nancy Garrido, stun-gunned Dugard and threw her in the back seat of their van leaving her confused with unanswered questions (Dugard 11). She did not get to see her mother that morning, and never saw her again for eighteen, long, torturous years.

Dugard was taken to Garrido’s “secret backyard” and thrown into a trailer, hand-cuffed and locked up where Garrido occasionally visited her just to have sex with her and give her food. She was only given one meal per day (Dugard 21). Garrido technically recreated slavery by using Dugard for sex and to “fulfill his fantasies” whenever he desired to. He even threatened her that he was going to sell her (Dugard 55). Nancy Garrido, Phillip Garrido’s wife, did not even care; in fact, she helped Garrido hide Dugard in the trailer. Eventually, Dugard became pregnant at such a young age. On August 18, 1994, “[her] beautiful baby girl, [A] came into the world at 4:35 a.m. [Dugard was] fourteen years old and very, very scared” (Dugard 109). Garrido did not force Dugard to make love to him as much since the baby arrived, but a few years later, at the age of sixteen, “[Dugard was] pregnant again. [She] was so afraid it would happen again.” Garrido decided to name her G (Dugard 119). As the children got older, Nancy Garrido became jealous