She has spoken to law enforcement audiences about trusting the professional instinct that does not yet have a name. The encounter with Garrido and the two girls had given her an uneasy feeling she could not convert into immediate action—she had found no legal basis to detain Garrido during that fifteen-minute meeting. But she had made the call. She had passed along what she could not yet articulate. And that call had reached the parole office at the precise moment that the parole officer received information—the two young daughters—that he could act on.
“She was meant to be found that day,” Jacobs said.
It is a statement that the careful analyst would want to qualify. The recovery was the product of specific actions taken by specific people. It was not inevitable; a different employee in Campbell’s position might have handled the permit request differently, a different officer might not have run the background check, a different parole officer might have been less immediately alert to the information about the daughters. But the people who were there that day did what they did, and the sequence of actions led to the Concord parole office.
Lisa Campbell was honored by Congressman Jerry McNerney with a congressional recognition at a public event in San Ramon. The ceremony included a framed statement in the Congressional Record and an American flag that had flown over the U.S. Capitol. State assemblywoman Joan Buchanan and local officials attended. Campbell received widespread recognition for her role in the sequence of events.