Angelique Garren isn’t dead, she’s just been hanging out in Spokane.

That’s a big relief to the 18-year-old Coeur d’Alene girl’s family. They feared the worst when the teenager didn’t show up at home for three days and officers found her car abandoned alongside the highway.

“I was fully prepared for the worst - I had to be,” said Earl Garren, the girl’s father.

Angelique Garren left her Coeur d’Alene home Sunday night planning to pick up a friend in Spokane.

When she didn’t return home her father became worried. His fears were only made worse when Idaho State Police told him they found her car abandoned along Interstate 90 near Post Falls.

A clerk at a nearby gas station told police that Garren came to the store late Sunday night after her car broke down. Two men and their girlfriends offered to give the teen a ride and Garren accepted. When her car wouldn’t start, another couple gave her a ride to Spokane.

As it turned out, Garren tried to call her dad Wednesday night to tell him where she was. But Earl Garren was out hanging up “missing” posters. Not knowing she was missing, the teen left a message on her dad’s answering machine, Earl Garren said.

That evening he tried to call his machine to check for messages from a pay phone. But the noise of passing traffic made it impossible to hear. When he got home and tried to listen to his messages, the machine’s tape had broken, he said.

Garren ended up calling police after hearing about her disappearance on the 11 p.m. news Wednesday.

“She was just visiting friends and hanging out,” her dad said Thursday.

, DataTimes