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SAN RAFAEL, Calif. (AP) — A 9-year-old New Mexico girl who got lost after she wandered away from her family's campsite in a Northern California park was found uninjured and in good spirits Saturday after spending the night alone in the woods, authorities said.
Two people on mountain bikes who had joined the intensive search for Ida Rothschild of Santa Fe, N.M., located the girl in Samuel P. Taylor State Park after hearing her calls for help from a hillside, television station KTVU reported (http://bit.ly/1ndf9ro ).
"I'm fine, Mom," Ida told her tearful mother after they were reunited, according to KTVU.
The mother told the station that her daughter said she had walked through the night trying to reach her family and didn't know so many people were looking for her. The girl was found about 2.5 miles away from the campsite.
More than 100 sheriff's deputies, search and rescue workers from neighboring counties, California Conservation Corps members and volunteers worked through the night looking for the girl, who was visiting the park in Marin County with her parents and two younger brothers Friday afternoon when she disappeared. Another hundred had resumed the painstaking search early Saturday, along with search dogs and an airplane.
It was the largest search for a missing person in the county in seven years, said Lt. Doug Pittman of Marin County Sheriff's Department. Pittman described Ida as "feisty."
Her parents reported her missing after spending 90 minutes looking for her. Her father had last seen her about noon Friday and realized she was gone about half an hour later.
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