LEVANT – A 10-year-old Carmel girl who wandered away from Levant Elementary School was found in a wooded area three miles away after a six-hour search that involved personnel from local, county and state agencies and local volunteers.

Angela Cookson, who turns 11 next month, was found in the woods about 50 yards off the Irish Road near the Carmel town line – cold, wet, muddy and tired but otherwise unharmed.

When the girl was found shortly after 2:30 p.m., searchers were getting ready to bring aircraft to Levant to help with the effort. Despite all of the eyes scanning the roadsides for any sign of the girl, two women driving by in a car ultimately found her, Warden Sgt. Doug Tibbetts said.

Tibbetts said that when the women encountered the county cruisers and warden pickups down the road, they asked the searchers if they were looking for a young girl. The women reportedly provided a description of Angela that was accurate down to the color of the off-white hat she was wearing.

According to the child’s mother, Eva Cookson, the elementary school pupil apparently left the school shortly after the school bus dropped her off at 8:15 a.m. to avoid repercussions from uncompleted homework.

“She was snow-covered and mud-covered and yelling for help. She was crying and upset. I think she wanted to be found,” said Sgt. Troy Morton of the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Department. Morton waded into the woods through knee-deep snow to fetch the child.

After he piggy-backed Angela back to the road, Morton whisked her into the warmth of the front seat of his waiting cruiser, where Levant emergency medical personnel tucked blankets around her and applied warm packs to her hands and feet. After emergency medical personnel determined that she suffered no major injuries from her day in the cold, Angela was released to her father, Albert Cookson, who drove out to the Irish Road to pick her up after he was notified that she’d been found.

Eva Cookson was at home with the youngest of her four children when she received a telephone call from school notifying her that Angela was nowhere to be found.

As she hurriedly left her home with her 2-year-old in tow, she slipped on some ice in the driveway. By the time she reached the school, her foot was beginning to throb from what later was determined to be a fracture. After she was examined by emergency medical personnel at the school, she wound up being taken to the hospital. In the meantime, she said, her husband left work and went home to wait in case Angela turned up there.

Eva Cookson described Thursday as one of the most frightening days of her life.

“You have no idea – we were scared to death,” Cookson said, her voice still filled with emotion less than two hours after her daughter was found. Skipping school that day was a first for Angela, the oldest of the Cooksons’ four children.

“I still haven’t really had a chance to talk to her,” Cookson said.

As soon as she got home, Angela was put into a warm bath to fend off a touch of hypothermia emergency medical personnel said she’d suffered, Cookson said.

By the time it came to its successful conclusion, the search involved personnel from the Penobscot Sheriff’s Department and the Maine Warden Service, Levant Fire and Rescue volunteers and bus drivers from her school district, some of whom also are volunteer firefighters, according to Morton.

The more than 20 people who helped look for Angela were assisted by German shepherd Anna and her handler, Warden Deborah Palman, and bloodhound Magoo and his handler, Officer Scott Estes of the Northern Maine Juvenile Correctional Facility in Charleston. The search dogs worked from scent articles provided by Angela’s parents, who moved to Carmel about a year ago.

The dogs and their handlers focused their efforts along the network of secondary roads in the vicinity of the school, as well as along the snowmobile trails that cross the Horseback Road within sight of the South Levant Baptist Church, one of the places the girl reportedly had been seen.

Morton said some of the factors that elevated searchers’ concern were the spring conditions, which presented temperatures that were cool enough to result in hypothermia and exposure, yet warm enough to result in thinning ice and high water levels, and the fact that the child seemingly vanished without a trace.

“Our concern was that somebody might have picked her up,” Morton said.