Happy endings in missing person cases are few and far between, but an Arvada family says they're blessed to have their daughter back home with them.
Police had been searching for 19-year-old Christine Harvey after she ran away from home last Friday. Over the weekend a "Missing At Risk Adult Alert" was issued through the Amber Alert system to help search for Harvey since she is developmentally disabled and described as having the mental capacity of a 12-year-old.
About an hour after she went missing, Harvey was seen on surveillance video from a gas station about two miles outside of her home asking for directions to the Jefferson County Library. Her parents feared foul-play.
"It's not a place that she's ever been. It's not something that she would necessarily determine on her own volition," her father Bill Harvey told CBS4.
By Sunday, the search had escalated to utilizing tracking dogs, search teams and even a helicopter provided by the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center.
Though the surveillance footage showed Harvey unaccompanied, her parents claimed she didn't have a lot of experience around people and worried for her safety.
"It would make it easy for a predator to take advantage of her. I pray to God that's not what it is," Bill Harvey told 7News.
Then Monday morning Harvey showed up at her high school asking a school employee if there was class that day. The employee told her there was no class because it was a teacher in-service day and then, recognizing Harvey, tried to get her to come inside the building but Harvey walked away to a car being driven by an unknown man and disappeared again.
Luckily later in the day Harvey was spotted again at a grocery store by a woman who recognized her as the missing teen on the news and she called the police who were able to return Harvey to her family.
According to police, it turned out that after Harvey left home last Friday she stopped to help a drunk man and that man gave her shelter, took her thrift shopping and drove her to school.
The man explained that he didn't watch the news or realize that police had been looking for Harvey for three days.
"We're blessed she ran in to a pretty decent guy and not one of the people we were so afraid of," Bill Harvey told 9News after Christine made it back home.
Police say that the man, who is being described as a Good Samaritan, is not facing any charges.
WATCH [via 9News] video above about the relief felt by Christine Harvey's family upon finding their daughter safe.