WHEELING, W. Va. -- One year after an 11-year-old girl was abducted, raped and released in North Wheeling, her mother said the girl is doing well, and doesn't dwell on what happened on Feb. 20, 2007.

Police said the victim and a friend were out walking near an alley just off of Main Street when a man in a pickup truck ran up to them, grabbed the 11-year-old and got her into his truck.

Wheeling officers, Ohio County deputies and state police sealed off the area while they searched for evidence and looked for the girl. They were also gathering the information necessary to issue an Amber Alert. They already had the most important piece -- the description of the 11-year-old victim.

"The other thing we were in the process of gathering was a description of the vehicle. Although we didn't have a plate number, we did have a very good description of the vehicle," said Gessler.

So why wasn't the alert ever issued? Gessler said the victim was found 52 minutes after the incident started and before State Police had the chance to get the alert out.

They said the abductor crossed the state lines into Ohio and brought her to a church construction site in St. Clairsville, Ohio, where he sexually assaulted her. Detectives said the attacker then dropped the victim off near a Bridgeport church. She was able to knock on a neighbor's door and get help.

Luckily, the victim was safe, and according to her mother, doing all right.

Gessler said his department did everything right that night, but said so did the young girls who the abductor approached.

"They were in well-lit areas, they walked together, they weren't alone and unfortunately there was just this predator out there that took over the situation."

And while in this case, the age old advice "stay away from strangers" holds true, Gessler said it's usually not "stranger danger" parents need to teach kids to look out for.

"Most abductions are parental type abductions, where there's some type of domestic issue between the parents,” said Gessler. “It's very rare that you have an abduction that is a pure stranger abduction."

But unfortunately he said, an abductor was out to make someone, anyone, a victim that night.

As a young girl tried to get past what happened to her, police were getting the public involved in the search for the "Wheeling Abductor."

"We need to catch this guy. Obviously before he would make an attempt to do something again," Chief Kevin Gessler said in March 2007.

Several days later after the abduction, police released a description of the truck they believed the abductor was driving, and a composite sketch of the abductor.

While hundreds of tips came into the FBI command post, nothing was panning out.

The first big break in the case came on Halloween. Investigators said there was a possible link between a rape in Kentucky and the Wheeling abduction. That's when police released a new composite sketch.

Then, the day the victim's mother and investigators had been waiting for came just before Christmas. Investigators announced DNA found on a Kentucky woman raped in August 2006 matched DNA police found on the picnic table in St. Clairsville, linking Joshua Ridings to the crime.

Ridings was already in custody in Kentucky on the other charges.

A federal affidavit said he lived in a trailer park campground in Ohio County while working as a boilermaker in Marshall County.

Now Ridings is in the Warrick County, Ind., Jail, where he awaits another trip back to Wheeling to appear in federal court.