Hannah Anderson search took over small Idaho town

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Phillip Garrido enters a courtroom in Placerville, Calif. Phillip Garrido was sentenced to 431 years in prison for Jaycee Dugard’s abduction. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

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A tent in the backyard of a home in Antioch, Calif., where authorities say kidnap victim Jaycee Lee Dugard lived. (Paul Sakuma / Associated Press)

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Elizabeth Smart addresses the media outside a federal courthouse following the guilty verdict in the Brian David Mitchell trail in Salt Lake City. Mitchell was found guilty in the June 5, 2002, kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart. (Colin E. Braley / Associated Press)

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Elizabeth Smart poses with her parents, Lois and Ed, outside their home in 2003. Smart was abducted from her Salt Lake City bedroom in 2002 (Tom Smart / Associated Press)

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Brian David Mitchell, Elizabeth Smart’s kidnapper, is escorted into the Frank E. Moss Federal Courthouse in Salt Lake City in 2010. (Jim Urquhart / Associated Press)

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Katie Beers, whose kidnapping attracted nationwide headlines in 1992, poses for a photo in Old Westbury, N.Y. The 30-year-old mother of two co-wrote a new book about her ordeal. (Frank Eltman / Associated Press)

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John Esposito sits handcuffed in a van in Hauppauge, N.Y., as he is about to be taken to court for arraignment on charges of kidnapping Katie Beers. (Michael Albans / Associated Press)

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Shawn Hornbeck, 15, watches as his parents Craig and Pam Akers talk to the media in Richwoods, Mo. Shawn, who was missing since Oct. 2002, was recovered in 2007 with another missing boy. (Tom Gannam / Associated Press)

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Michael Devlin is escorted out of the Franklin County Courthouse in Union, Mo. Devlin pleaded guilty in Franklin County to one charge of child kidnapping and one count of armed criminal action in the 2007 abduction of 13-year-old William “Ben” Ownby. (Tom Gannam / Associated Press)

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Steven Stayner, right, and and his brother Delbert Stayner walk toward their Merced County home as Steven was reunited with his family following a 7-year kidnap ordeal. (Ted Benson / Associated Press)

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Convicted kidnapper Kenneth Eugene Parnell during a court appearance in Oakland in 2003. Parnell was convicted in the kidnappings of Steven Stayner in 1972 and Timothy White in 1980. (Nick Lammers / Associated Press)

By Kate Mather

Aug. 13, 2013 7:17 AM PT

CASCADE, Idaho — The only sign that anything out of the ordinary happened in this quiet community sits on the southern edge of town.

The electronic sign outside Ben Wellington’s real estate office flashes the time and temperature — the only one in the county to do so, he proudly noted. But starting Sunday morning, a new message was added to its rotation.

“Good job law enforcement.”

The message could mean a few things, Wellington said. “Good job that you got him. Good job you saved her life.”

“I just felt like I wanted to express my opinion. I wanted to recognize the law enforcement people,” he said. “They put an end to this.”

“This” was the multi-state manhunt that ended about 50 miles away from here Saturday, in a stretch of rugged backcounty authorities scoured after horseback riders spotted missing San Diego County teen Hannah Anderson and her abductor, James Lee DiMaggio.

The road that leads to the area where the pair was seen sits just within Cascade’s northern limit, making the town of 1,000 residents the meeting point for hundreds of law enforcement officials and dozens of reporters.

What would have been normally a busy weekend with the usual tourists and area wildfires escalated to “an abnormal situation for Cascade,” Mayor Rob Terry told The Times.

“We get a big influx of people that get here Friday and leave Sunday. Every fire season, we have helicopters at the airport that come in and take over,” he said. “This isn’t a major Type-A personality town. ... We have to roll with the flow.

“The whole issue was, unfortunately, this was 50 miles away from Cascade.”

Diners were packed, hotels booked solid. Satellite trucks camped out at the fire station, awaiting news conferences.

“It was nuts,” one man quipped Monday.

The frenzy ended Saturday, after two FBI teams raided the Morehead Lake campsite where DiMaggio and Hannah were staying. The girl was safely rescued and DiMaggio — suspected of killing Hannah’s mother and 8-year-old brother in San Diego County before kidnapping the girl — was shot and killed.

“We were all relieved,” said Debbie Gunderson, manager of the Ashley Inn. “Everybody was relieved. And grateful to all those people that came to help and that they were able to do it so quickly.”

By Monday, the commotion was gone. Most of the law enforcement teams had cleared out. The reporters had moved on.

Terry laughed when he said he was glad the crowd had left.

“Basically it’s all back to normal,” he said.

Gunderson agreed. She said the town gets attention “every now and then,” recalling a similar, albeit smaller, situation in 2007, when big wildfires raged nearby.

It “wasn’t the best way to get on the map,” she said of the DiMaggio manhunt. But, she admitted, “it was kind of fun to get the excitement.”

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Twitter: @katemather