Back on the ranch grounds, however, Anne's exuberance and joy at being home erupted. A purple petunia met Anne's matching lavender dress as she plucked it and held it near her heart.

"See!" Anne giggled, "Mother, see my flower!"

Zavenda's smile matched her daughter's as she reached out to snatch another hug from her blond-haired child.

"She is so happy here," Zavenda said, as Anne ran off, teasing her father by peeking out from between the steps leading to the schoolhouse door. "She didn't like the shelter. When we went to visit her it would take an hour and a half to get her to talk to us. We would play together and then she would realize that our time was almost up. Then she just crawled back into her shell and wouldn't talk."

But there were many acts of kindness shown to his family during their long ordeal, Edson said.

"It's amazing. No matter how many times we drove around the state we found people who were kind to us," he said. "I bought a tank of gas the other day and a gentleman took my money and said, 'God bless you.' I think it's done us a lot of good to have people come here on the ranch and see how we live. To see we have individual homes and to feel the humanity here."

Jessop, a former city councilman and vice mayor of Colorado City, Ariz., said he helped build the YFZ community and hopes to stay there.

"It's a piece of me, if you know what I mean," he said, looking around. "We didn't build this community to walk away from it."

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E-mail: nperkins@desnews.com