lost and determined to show its solidarity as it moves forward. for elizabeth and all of us here, good night. >> reporter: tonight, on "20/20," a diane sawyer special. the little girl who did the impossible. she survived. 18 years, handcuffed, held captive in a backyard by a sex offender. an all-new interview about how you turn your terror into triumph. >> just makes you want to dance. >> reporter: the two daughters she gave birth to, now grown. how she feels about finding love today. and the unlikely video she wants everyone to watch. to understand how you can save a life.

tonight, lessons for everyone about finding joy every day. jaycee dugard, "freedom: my book of firsts." hello. i'm diane sawyer. tonight, you're about to spend time with someone astonishing. we wanted to bring you a new interview with a woman that stunned the nation with her story of survival. she was 11 years old when she was captured, and he kept her prison for 18 years. so, no one knows more about what that kind of captivity means. tonight, as she releases her new

book, jaycee dugard today. on any given day in america, you could be walking by someone whose story could change your life. ♪ see your next move >> reporter: a young woman who seems to be in an ordinary, happy day. you pass by, no idea what she's endured. ♪ changing the story >> reporter: no idea that she was once the little girl taken captive by a sex offender, held prisoner for 18 years, surviving his rages, his abuse, giving birth to two children in a hidden backyard. this was jaycee lee dugard when her childhood was stolen. this was jaycee lee dugard five years ago when she talked to me after her rescue. >> my world changed in an instant. >> reporter: and this is jaycee lee dugard today. re-emerging out of her privacy with lessons she's learned in the past five years about transforming suffering into joy every single day.

>> oh, this is my farite! >> reporter: an unexpected master class in resilience and renewal from someone who had to learn life's toughest lessons at age 11. look at her. it's as if time's stopped. do you feel 35? >> 36. >> reporter: 36. >> i am closer to 40. [ laughter ] say i look a little bit older, please. >> reporter: sorry. >> i feel old. i feel like i have lived a lot of lifetimes, you know? and i don't really -- i, i don't know. i don't really put an age to myself. when you, when you look in the mirror, do you like -- >> reporter: yes. >> you do? >> reporter: even her face in some ways a constant reminder of the time stolen from her. all those years as a captive in a predator's backyard, a prisoner inside a shed. your skin. >> no sun for 18 years. >> reporter: but you said your eyes are still very sensitive to light.

>> yeah, very, very sensitive to -- to sunlight. >> reporter: a scar invisible to the world. scars she says she accepts in the life she now lives with her mother and her daughters, the ones she gave birth to in captivity. she has written a second book about finding the path to your life to freedom. >> i don't think there is anything inside me that isn't in anybody else. it's taken a lot of time and it hasn't, it hasn't come overnight. you know, you have to put in the hard work and cry and, for sure, laugh about everything that you can. >> reporter: she says sometimes you can only find the light by looking straight through the darkest memories. >> what it was like being in the backyard. it's always there, in the back of my mind. it never really goes away. >> reporter: "the backyard." that's always how you call it? >> the fences. the prison backyard. >> reporter: there is no way to tell you about the triumph of jaycee dugard today without taking you back to those last

moments when she was still a safe and happy little girl, an 11-year-old who loved her mom, her little sister, a cat named monkey. a child who also loves words and books and her fifth grade class at school. on june 10th, 1991, as she always did, she walked up the little hill in front of her house in lake tahoe, california, to catch the school bus. she was dressed in her favorite outfit, pink tights and a white t-shirt with a pink kitty cat on front. she reaches the road. a gray car pulls up. a stranger rolls down the window. >> and his hand shoots out and i just feel numb. >> reporter: he had shocked her with a stun gun. >> my whole body is tingly. i don't know what it's from. >> reporter: she falls to the ground unconscious. the man driving is phillip garrido, a convicted sex offender, sentenced to 50 years in prison but released after just 11. in the car with him, his wife nancy. prosecutors will say she helped scout the little girl as his prize. it is nancy who has the

11-year-old child pinned to the back seat floor. >> i heard the driver say, i can't believe we got away with it, and he started laughing. >> reporter: the garridos drive their captive 150 miles to a blue house in a neighborhood near san francisco. an ordinary-looking house but concealed behind there is a fence. and behind the fence, a deranged scene, a collection of rundown sheds and storage units hidden in the trees. garrido strips off the child's clothes, her little pink tights and puts a blanket over her head. he takes the naked child into this shed, tiny, completely soundproof. he tells her he's going to put her in handcuffs. >> said that they were the fuzzy kind, so they wouldn't hurt as bad. >> reporter: he locks her inside and she has no idea that this prison backyard will be her life for 18 years. strange what fades in memory, strange what remains. in her dreams, she used to see

that little pink outfit. with the kitty cat. >> he just burned it. yeah, i still think about that little outfit, for some reason. >> reporter: naked, handcuffed, weeping, alone, the only thing she has left from her safe and happy life is a little ring shaped like a butterfly. she takes it off and manages to hide it from him for 18 years until she is free. again, she's 11 years old and knows nothing about his plans. she thinks sex is ken and barbie dolls sleeping near each other. then one day he brings her a treat, a milkshake. she is still in handcuffs. >> my first taste of -- of pure evil. >> reporter: you knew it was pure evil at some -- >> oh, yeah. >> reporter: it's the first day he rapes her. >> i mean, maybe i didn't register that and go, oh, my god, you're evil. but your body and your -- you know, there's something inside

of you that knows, this is not right. >> reporter: the pain. the abject fear. afterwards she remembers seeing a trail of ants make their way towards that untouched milkshake. at one point he gives her a tv tuned into qvc. >> i would fall asleep to the sound of jewelry being sold. but at least it was talking. >> reporter: her only company, a spider on the wall she names bianca. >> there was not a day that i didn't cry. i felt like there would never, ever be a day that i wouldn't cry again. >> reporter: there's a towel over the window in the shed. after he leaves, she pulls it down with her teeth. moonlight streaming through. when we talked five years ago here's what she told me about thinking of her mother and how it got her through the nights. >> we would always sit on the porch, and we would debate whether the full moon or the crescent moon was the better moon. i always liked the full moon and

she liked the crescent. and it just always made me think of her. >> reporter: do you remember the song you and your mom sang looking at the moon? >> yeah. "you are the moon." how does it go, i forget. ♪ i love the moon and the move loves me ♪ >> sees me. i see the moon and the moon sees me. god bless the moon and god bless me. >> reporter: when we come back, how you recover from 18 years of terror as a captive. and jaycee dugard, her mother, her daughters. what has happened since. ♪

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once, diane sawyer, and freedom: my book of firsts. >> reporter: we meet up with jaycee dugard at a ranch near her house. for the past five years she's been coming here. it's a kind of unexpected training ground for building independence. there's a riot of animals of all kinds. >> and then down here is the barn. >> reporter: there are even miniature horses. >> good girl.

>> reporter: aurora is a speed freak. after all the obedience and forced submission for 18 years, she has had to learn the basics of becoming herself. how you make choices, and the ordinary interactions of buying something in a store. >> you want a receipt, darling? >> no, thank you. thank you. >> have a great day, honey. >> you, too. >> reporter: and what about going out in crowds? >> that's easier. i prefer not crowds. >> reporter: still. >> yeah. >> reporter: but she says the hardest thing to conquer is the terror embedded inside you. for instance, of strangers and what strangers can do. for months, a little girl locked in a shed, saw only one person every day -- phillip garrido. who warned her, if she tried to escape, there were dogs outside the door. he threatened to sell her to other people. so she would promise to do more for him. and then, a month and a half after the first rape, he moved her to a new shed and put the stun gun out on the table where

she could see it. he told her demon angels -- voices in his head -- had revealed that she was supposed to help him with his sexual problems. and, and that you were saving other little girls. >> yeah. yeah. how stupid is that? >> reporter: he cuts out pornography, dresses her up in makeup, mascara. tight dresses. >> snatching a little girl and then making her dress up. you know, it's all about control for these, for him, for these other freaks that do this. >> reporter: she has written how he smoked methamphetamine and began 24-hour marathons of sexual abuse. >> i remember one night when he dressed me up. >> reporter: she remembers looking in the mirror. >> all i saw was a frightened girl who i didn't even recognize with mascara running down her cheeks. and the saddest face i had ever glimpsed staring back at me. >> reporter: she's afraid what he'll do if he sees her tears. >> i did not want to provoke the sleeping dragon.

>> reporter: a man 6'4" tall. a little girl, barely 4'6", 80 pounds. she says she had to study his rages, his demands. and writes about animals in the wild that play dead to survive. >> i was a predator and prey, you know? very much prey, obviously. but predator too, you know, i really had to analyze him and stay alert. like, stay sane. >> reporter: which is why she says she's on a kind of mission today to change the way we talk about victims. she's outraged by a phrase used often in this country. she says the phrase implies that children cracked by terror and abuse become affectionate towards their captors. the term is stockholm syndrome. is it stockholm syndrome? >> stockholm syndrome. >> stockholm syndrome. >> which means she developed a bond with her abductors. >> reporter: stockholm syndrome was first used in the 1970s in sweden to describe a connection hostages formed with bank robbers there. why do you hate the phrase

"stockholm syndrome" so much? >> well, it's really -- it's degrading. you know, having my family believe that i was in love with this captor and wanted to stay with him. i mean, that is so far from the truth that it, it makes me want to throw up. you know, it's, it's disgusting. i adapted to survive my circumstances. there is just no other way to put it. >> reporter: what was he to you? >> he was always my captor. you know, there was -- i never forgot that. never forgot that. >> reporter: she's even been invited to speak at yale and harvard and mass general. >> hi, everyone. my name is jaycee dugard. >> reporter: she urges experts never to use the phrase again. reminding everyone what terror does to you and how many children never make it back alive. are there things from the backyard that you still can't confront? that you have not written, that you have not even allowed yourself to say? >> no. i've let it all out.

because you can't keep that kind of stuff inside. >> it is not her shame. those things happened to her. they're not who she is. >> reporter: this is jaycee dugard's therapist, dr. rebecca bailey, who says you have to stare fear in the face until it cannot hurt you anymore. she wrote again about the sexual abuse. did you ever feel like saying to her, don't write anymore. don't talk about it anymore. let that go. >> no, because i think one of the most important things of working with survivors of abduction is allowing them to have choices in every single thing they do. so i never thought she wrote too much about it or too little. i think she wrote just what she needed to do for her. >> reporter: dr. bailey owns the ranch where animals are used to help victims of trauma learn their own strength. a place where a young woman can learn to dominate a creature ten times her size and physical power. it is an exercise called joining up. >> joining up is about a certain

amount of authority that they have to see you with. >> reporter: it starts with a kind of psychological duel, between horse and human. she has to show she has control, conveying what she wants to the horse without saying a word. so they have to see something in your face. >> mm-hmm. as, as like their leader. the one in charge. >> reporter: and watch what happens. when she moves in silence the horse responds by walking behind her. when she runs, the horse follows, in lock step. it is a portrait of how far this woman has traveled. leaving behind that 11-year-old girl that was haolding on to lie in that backyard.

i wonder, have you seen what it looks like today, in the backyard? >> no. i haven't. >> reporter: this is it. >> wow. they just bulldozed. looks like somebody else lives there now. >> reporter: it's dirt and -- >> no, that's a good thing. >> reporter: and maybe a haunted history. >> yeah. >> reporter: when we come back, the outrage. 60 times police could have found jaycee dugard and did not. what has changed? and if you doubt she has power over the horse, watch what happens when i try it. [ laughter ] ♪but i'm not gonna let 'em catch me, no no,♪ ♪not gonna let 'em catch the midnight rider,♪ ♪yeaaahh... ♪but i'm not gonna let 'em catch me nooo♪ ♪not gonna let 'em catch the midnight riiiiiiiideer!♪

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>> reporter: studies show that every year there are about 100 children taken captive by strangers. many of them are rescued. but in jaycee dugard's case, law enforcement had so many chances to find her and failed over and over for 18 years. so what happened to her was a revelation about what had to change. ♪ this is a home movie that law enforcement failed to prevent.

phillip garrido and his wife. she seems to be capturing garrido playing a song on his guitar. but the guitar is just a ruse. look where they are -- behind them, a children's playground. she's pretending to film him while getting shots of little children. >> you got me real good? >> yes. i can see you really good. >> reporter: at this moment, garrido should have been in prison. he had been convicted, sentenced to 50 years for a previous abduction and rape, but somehow he was paroled after just 11 years. parole officers promising they'd check on him. even giving him a gps tracker, which apparently no one really monitored. >> he wore a gps tracker. >> reporter: so you would know he was -- >> you can clearly see him going to the secret backyard. >> reporter: and they would have been able to spot how much time he was spending there. >> yeah. >> reporter: and where he was spending it, back there. >> exactly. so what happened to all that -- that tracking? what -- what good is a gps tracker system, if they are not going to -- >> reporter: follow up. >> you know, follow up. >> reporter: and here is a stunning fact -- 60 times parole officers would come to the

garrido house, but not check behind the fence where they could see the prison backyard. this is another video taken by the garridos. a parole officer has arrived at the home for a routine check. you can hear nancy garrido attempting to distract the officer, pestering him. >> what does a parole agent do for his parolee? >> ma'am, you can come in the office and we'll discuss that at an appropriate time. right now i'm doing a search. if you stay in this front room then i don't have to place you in restraints. because right now i'm searching the house. >> reporter: and so the parole officer leaves. >> i'm doing everything i'm supposed to do. >> i know it. >> reporter: and remember, jaycee dugard is being held captive just 30 feet away. there is only one person who never stops looking for that little girl. an anguished woman just 150 miles away from that captive backyard. she too has been looking up at the moon at night. terry probyn, jaycee's mother.

>> pretty, young, innocent child. and it's time that she comes home. >> reporter: she never gave up hope, pleading with police to keep searching. she even kept jaycee's little bedroom frozen in time, hoping for the day she would return. >> even though she's not here, she's still in my heart. >> reporter: year after year passes by. an artist makes a sketch of jaycee as she might look in her 20s. five years ago, when jaycee's mother talked to me after the rescue, she said she was having trouble fighting the rage. >> i think i have enough pain in my heart for the both of us. i hate that he took her life away. he ripped out a piece of my heart. >> reporter: that was terry probyn then. terry probyn today. she says she's still fighting her anger at the garridos and the carelessness of the police. >> it does. it does eat at me, still to this day. and i know i have to channel that anger into something good,

because it will eat me alive if i don't, if i let it. >> reporter: still, that terror when jaycee's out of sight. >> the thoughts flood. "is she going to come back? am i ever going to see her again?" and then i'll hear her, you know, skulking around in the kitchen and i'll think, "oh." "it's okay. she is here, she is home." >> reporter: are you surprised that, in some ways, it's harder on you five years later than it is on her? >> i wish it wasn't. you know, i don't want to carry this any longer. >> reporter: she says she is trying to move forward, learning from her daughter, who says that rage is also a kind of invisible prison. >> i didn't want to give one more minute to phillip and nancy. i mean, they took 18 years of my life. >> reporter: the last time we saw phillip garrido in court, at one point he looks at his wife, his accomplice, mouthing "i love

you." has he tried to contact you? >> phillip? no. not, not that i know of. >> so, he got 431 years. she got 36 years. does that seem enough? >> i don't know. that's a hard question. i mean, i -- i would like to see them in jail for the rest of their lives. i don't really believe in the death penalty. it's just, it's hard knowing that you're paying, being like a taxpayer now, you know, knowing that, that you're paying for his meals three times a day, and -- that's, you know, that's a little hard to swallow. >> reporter: after her rescue, the state of california gave jaycee dugard $20 million and there was a scathing report by the inspector general concluding there was chilling incompetence by police. when we asked what has changed today, we received an e-mail saying california now monitors

sex offenders more closely. >> we have amber alert now, we have stronger laws. >> reporter: robert lowery, vice president of the national center for missing and exploited children, says more children are rescued today. he credits new technology. >> we have technology today that didn't exist when jaycee was taken. with the amount of cameras we have today, we'd have gotten a good picture of his car and we would have had a good chance of getting his license plate. >> reporter: but all those years ago, a little girl in the backyard had to find her own ways to stay alive. she began writing about her sadness in a journal, a little heart at the end of each entry. eventually on little scraps of paper she hid from her captors, she dreamed of having superpowers. and then, 1,029 days after she was taken prisoner, many of those days spent in handcuffs, jaycee dugard started to feel strange. it turns out she is 4 1/2 months pregnant at the age of 13. she starts to go into labor.

no one is around. she's alone, trapped in the shed. >> i can't fathom how i kept it together, or, you know, i must've been checked out, you know, on a different level. you know, present, but not present for, you know, some of it, because it's -- it's terrifying on its own. but being alone -- how did i even do that? >> reporter: when the garridos finally return, they give her codeine. phillip garrido says he knows how to deliver a baby because he's watched videos. the young child is in labor for another 12 hours. but she says she's learned every time she feels the shadows of the past moving in, she can choose to celebrate instead what it was to give birth alone and survive. and when you think of the risk? >> yeah. anything could happen. and i had two.

yeah. i'm pretty amazing. [ laughter ] maybe we should cut that part. next, a captive child gives birth twice in a backyard. and what jaycee says about her daughters today. and if you go to abcnews.com, there are detailed steps about protecting your children against predators. what's it like to not feel 100% fresh? we don't know. we swish listerine®. as do listerine® users. the very people we studied in the study of bold. people who are statistically more likely to stand up to a bully. do a yoga handstand. and be in a magician's act. listerine® kills 99% of bad breath germs so you can feel 100% in life. bring out the bold™.

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>> reporter: take a drive with jaycee dugard. and somehow, everything means more. >> like a room without a roof. when we're on the road, we see something that seems right out of a children's story. >> oh, my gosh, there is a deer! >> reporter: you'll have to imagine what we saw. a mother deer like a ballerina leaping across the road into the forest.

and right behind her, two little babies joyfully vaulting into the trees. >> that was me and my girls. >> reporter: her two girls born in that backyard, now all grown up and thriving. five years ago, she told me about being a child herself and seeing her first baby. >> she was beautiful. i felt like i wasn't alone anymore. i had somebody that was mine. i wasn't alone. and i knew i could never let anything happen to her. i didn't know how i was going to do that. but i did. >> reporter: clinging to hope, she planted a flower in the prison backyard.

and set up a little school to teach her daughters everything she knew. from the fifth grade. >> yeah. that's my limited education. >> reporter: today, her two babies are attending college. something she didn't dare to dream when they were captive in that backyard. >> they're so resilient and they're beautiful and loving. >> reporter: she's protecting their privacy. some of their friends don't even know their history. if you met them, you'd be stunned by their vibrance, their curiosity, and independence. >> she's like, i'm going to accomplish something in my life! >> reporter: she said she wasn't going to let fear limit her children's lives. >> do we scare our kids into never wanting to do anything, or do we prepare them for the worst in life, never knowing if -- you know, if it's really going to happen? >> reporter: she also made sure they talk freely about the twisted life in the backyard and what really happened. >> they saw his craziness and ups and downs and knew how unpredictable he was. >> reporter: do you still call him their dad, which you did

five years ago? >> when i refer to him, no. i think i've been calling him phillip lately, actually. yeah. when we do talk about him. >> reporter: do they ask you more questions about why you didn't take them and leave? >> no, actually. they don't. they know our circumstances. they know that's not even a question for them. it never has been. >> reporter: and amazingly, the three of them have learned how to find some laughter in that deranged, distorted time. >> to know it was okay to laugh about phillip and nancy and their craziness, it, it helps. >> reporter: it helps tame it. >> rebecca really taught me to, to laugh, that it's okay to laugh. >> reporter: when she says, "i sit with my girls and we laugh at what we went through." and i think everybody thinks it's just going to be -- it's a wake, an eternal wake, for 18 years of your life. but she says, "we laughed." >> that's really the secret. it doesn't mean you can't be sad and you can't cry and you can't have hurts, but you've also got

to be able to let go. >> reporter: it's a lesson jaycee dugard brings to the jayc foundation, which she created to help other victims of trauma and their families recover. the foundation also uses animals to teach strength and confidence. like that exercise where the 1,200-pound horse obeys jaycee's unspoken commands. >> reporter: and if you don't believe it's a true power, watch what happened when i tried it. i'm determined to move this horse. okay, i'm going to think. using my famous iron will. first, the horse is immovable. what's happening here? >> let's stand back. >> reporter: then, the horse goes on strike. the kind of laughter that moves you forward into the rest of your life. and we noticed something in her new book. remember, she was just 11 when she was kidnapped. she'd never even been on a date. >> the only time i was asked on a date was when i was like 8 or

something like that. and i was so shy. i didn't even look up when this boy was asking me to go out with him. he was like 8 too. >> reporter: but she now writes "i don't feel so damaged that i'm put off by the idea of a relationship. i just don't know." to say that you're not so damaged that you couldn't have a physical relationship is a big statement. >> yeah. and i have no way of knowing if that's really true, but i want it to be true. >> reporter: and you'd have to learn, step by step, what that means. >> yeah. >> reporter: it's a guy who's -- >> caring, has a sense of humor, can laugh about all this stuff. loves to cook. >> reporter: have you seen anyone and you thought, "could he be someone?" >> nope. it's not that i don't think about that, stuff, it's just there's no guys in my life like that. >> reporter: you're not on a dating site. >> no. >> reporter: just checking. do your daughters want you to find someone? >> they do. yeah. i've learned from them, actually. a lot. >> reporter: what? >> there can be ups and downs

and you can have one relationship and then move on just in a normal, healthy way. >> reporter: what are you afraid of now? >> i still get afraid of missing out on things. maybe i won't take that chance or, you know, that opportunity. there's lots of things to be afraid of, you know? >> reporter: looking for a life that will give her the final freedom from the man who imprisoned her 18 years. if the girls say, someday, they want to go see him -- can't bear that? >> it's their decision. i would hope they would choose not to. >> reporter: do you worry at some point they'll want to see him? >> i want them to make their own choices in life, and if that's something that they need to do, then, you know -- >> reporter: really, you'd be okay with that? >> i wouldn't be okay with it, but i wouldn't not let them do it. >> reporter: is there a story that you tell each other

collectively that begins, "once upon a time." >> once upon a time -- >> reporter: yes. what is the once upon a -- >> there were three. >> reporter: there were -- >> a mom and two daughters and they lived with a crazy person. for a really long time, and then they came out of the backyard and there was ups and there was downs and they met a whole lot of amazing people, and they lived their life. >> reporter: their life. >> yeah, they lived their life. more about the jayc foundation on our website. when we come back, a secret about surviving in captivity, buried inside this stunning videotape. a giant wooden tiger. well, the answer is that a real one would maul me. i've crafted dr. whiskers here as a visual aid to show you that should you visit the lot,

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here again, diane sawyer. >> reporter: some of the children from a kind of

survivors' club of horror and hope. some able to escape right away on their own. like 7-year-old erica pratt, abducted. her feet and hands bound with duct tape, but in the first 24 hours, she's able to chew through the tape, smash a window, and scream until a neighbor hears her. steven stayner was held captive for seven years when he finally decided to make a break for freedom. in the dead of night, reunited with his parents. he ran off in order to save another child, newly taken captive. little 5-year-old timmy white. and of course there is the story we all saw in the movies, drawing from a real-life case. a mother trains her son to play dead. she rolls him up in a carpet. >> roll, jack. roll. come on, roll. >> reporter: she sends him out to get help. the actress in the movie "room" won the academy award. did you see "room?" >> yeah, i read the book. i haven't seen the movie. i heard that people are like thinking it's close to my story, but i mean, reading the book i didn't get that feeling at all.

it's very different than what i went through and you can't really speculate until you, you've lived it. >> reporter: in her case, a child in those handcuffs, bolted in a soundproof shed. like the women in cleveland who were also sometimes held in chains before their escape after ten years. >> help me. i'm amanda berry. >> reporter: and what about the young woman in the first famous case in america, the heiress patty hearst, who tried to explain how fear can keep you from running. >> why didn't i leave? all i can answer is that i just couldn't. i just plain couldn't. >> reporter: in 1974, it looked as if hearst was supporting her captors in a string of bank robberies. but she reminds everyone she had been raped and held in a closet. >> after everything they'd done to me, i felt so afraid and my thinking was so twisted that i really believed i could not go and turn myself in without being killed. >> reporter: and after years as a captive, jaycee dugard was

also allowed to move around the garridos' home. >> there was no leaving. i was 11 when i was taken. and then, you know, all the rape and torture and it just -- it really debilitates you. it makes you immobile and, and you freeze. >> reporter: she says for a child, this is not ordinary fear. this is unfathomable terror. when she speaks to professional groups, she explains by using an unexpected lesson from animals in the wild. in this scene you see a cheetah in pursuit of an impala. >> the cheetah overpowers the impala, and it looks like it's taking it down. >> reporter: watch what happens when another animal moves in and startles the cheetah. that impala leaps up and runs, fully alive. >> that prey that you think is totally dead. jumps up and runs away. and that's kind of like what i

did, you know? i had to play dead and play that i was, you know, like this docile person and, you know, i jumped up and here i am. i am alive. >> reporter: and tonight, jaycee dugard wants to remind every one of us, we too could startle a predator. and save a child. a child like elizabeth smart who was walking outside with her captors but was too terrified to call out for help. she'd been captive nine months when strangers passing by recognized her captor and made a call. >> i turned around and went back to my husband and i said, "that's him, let me have your cell phone." >> reporter: and what about this waitress working the overnight shift when she saw a man, a customer with a young girl. she thought that girl looked like 8-year-old captive shasta groene. so she gained time with the man, the abductor, by slowly listing every single dessert on the menu for the child. >> no child in their right mind would ever turn down a dessert. >> reporter: while she was doing it, her boss was calling police. >> this is linda, the manager at

denny's. >> yes? >> i've got a little girl here with a tall gentleman and she looks so much like that shasta. >> reporter: and jaycee dugard also owes her freedom to strangers. in 2009, two uc berkeley campus police noticed a kind of crackpot on campus spouting religious rants with two young children, his daughters, in tow. the security officers looked at the girls and sensed something was wrong. they got garrido's name, discovered he was a sex offender. he was summoned to the parole officer. and with him, a woman who sat silently in terror. for hours, they ask, but she was too frightened to speak her real name. until finally she wrote it down. stunned police officers ask if she wanted to call her mother. >> i'm like, i can see my mom? it was like a question to them, you know? i can? >> reporter: and when that phone rang -- >> i was crying, you know, when you're crying, you can't speak.

oh, i just said, "come quick." i remember saying, "come, come quick." >> and i remember telling you, "i'm coming, baby. i'm coming." >> reporter: reminding us tonight there are thousands of missing children who could be waiting for a stranger to notice something, and help set them free. if you see something strange or suspicious, you can call this number,

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the nissan rogue, murano and pathfinder. now get 0% apr for up to 72 months, plus $500 bonus cash. ♪ >> reporter: it's hard to believe it's been five years since we first talked to jaycee dugard. i reminded her of a little list she made all those years ago in that prison backyard. a list of things she dreamed of doing but never thought she would. see mom, check. >> true. [ laughter ] >> reporter: ride in a hot air balloon. >> check. >> reporter: learn to drive. >> check. [ laughter ] >> reporter: take a train ride. >> check. yeah. >> reporter: ooh. >> i've done that. >> reporter: write a bestseller.

>> double check! hopefully. [ laughter ] >> reporter: what about learn to sail an old-fashioned sailing ship? >> no. i'd really like to do that. or at least sell sail on one. >> reporter: so, before we leave, a surprise. another first for her. >> i think it's going to feel like flying. oh, my gosh. it's beautiful. >> hi, welcome aboard. my name's rob. i'll be the captain. >> you ready? >> yeah, i want to do it. >> to see this, like, absolute strong woman pulling the sails up where five years ago, when i first met this scared young lady who'd had so much of her life robbed from her and see her out here doing this. it's pretty neat. ♪ >> whoa. [ laughter ] >> get us to go straight right

now. >> am i going too fast? it's fun. >> reporter: a crew member tells her about a famous saying on the boat, "you can't control the wind, but you can adjust your sails." her new book, "freedom," comes out next tuesday. i'm diane sawyer. thank you for joining us tonight. from all of us at "20/20" and abc news, good night.

developing news in san francisco. protesters have made it a late night. >> next, a live i just picked us up 2 breakfast croissants for $4, when this bear attacked. with one swipe, it devoured one of the croissants. then jack showed up, and took care of the beast, so i could escape. and that's what happened to your breakfast croissant. and yours? it survived. enjoy freshly cracked egg with ham and bacon. or sausage. two tasty croissants at an even tastier $4 price. it's a deal you'll devour.