Sabrina Allen, a Texas girl reported missing 12 years ago was found in Mexico with her mother after officials received a tip, according to news reports.
The mother was quickly flown to Texas and jailed on kidnapping charges, investigators said, after Allen, now 17, was found in Papalotla, Tlaxcala.
The case was twice profiled on the television show America's Most Wanted after she vanished in 2002, following a weekend visit with her mother.
Sabrina is "in pretty bad shape as far as my understanding," her father, Gregory Allen, said at a news conference with the FBI and Austin, Texas, police.
"She was not living a regular life. She has not been going to school."
Allen, who has held out hope for this moment for over his decade, has not yet seen her, but says his first question will be to "ask her if I can give her a hug."
The teenager and her mother, Dara Llorens, were flown back to Texas early Wednesday. Llorens is now jailed in Austin on an aggravated kidnapping charge.
She is being held on a $300,000 bond.
U.S. and Mexican authorities said the two had been living in an apartment and that Llorens initially put up some resistance when she was arrested by Mexican officers.
But investigators released no other details about the arrest of Llorens or about how long they believed she had been in Mexico with her daughter.
Six months after the girl went missing, a friend of Llorens told the FBI that he had dropped Llorens and Sabrina off at the international bridge in Laredo, Texas.
Allen had hired a private investigator to help find his daughter, and that authorities were tipped off by a confidential informant, but he did not offer more details.
Having since remarried and had more children, Allen never gave up, recalling how he spent a month walking through neighborhoods handing out fliers.
"This has been a long road. What wound up happening is we got lucky," Allen said, and we can only hope Sabrina can someday recover from this ordeal.
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