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## The Community Around the Property
The neighbors of the Garrido property have been described in various accounts of the case as having had concerns without knowing specifically what those concerns pointed toward. The Inspector General’s report catalogued five neighbors who had observations that, with hindsight, might have informed a parole investigation.
One neighbor had encountered a girl named Jaycee in 1991—the year of the abduction—at or near the property. The significance of that encounter, without any other context to connect it to the missing girl from South Lake Tahoe, would have been imperceptible. The girl’s name was Jaycee. People were named Jaycee. There was no reason for a neighbor who encountered a girl named Jaycee in a residential neighborhood to connect that encounter to a national missing person case, any more than a neighbor who met a girl named Ashley in 1991 would have connected that meeting to one of the many other missing-child cases being tracked in the same period.
What the Inspector General’s report highlighted was not that the neighbors should have known more than they did, but that parole agents should have asked. Talking to neighbors is a standard tool of field supervision. Parole agents conducting home visits are expected, in normal supervisory practice, to develop awareness of the environment around a supervisee’s home, to speak with people who are in a position to observe the supervisee’s behavior and activities. In ten years of California parole supervision of Phillip Garrido, no agent spoke to a neighbor.
