EDMONTON -- When the police officer came to Allison Crowell's door, her heart nearly stopped.

After five sleepless nights frantically searching for her missing 14-year-old daughter, Crowell feared the worst.

"I just held my breath," she recalled yesterday.

But Key-Ley was in the back of the cop's cruiser, dehydrated, exhausted and shaken up, but otherwise unharmed.

She had been found that morning sleeping in a field near Mill Woods.

How she got there, Crowell said yesterday, is still a mystery.

Key-Ley, who has a pacemaker because of a heart condition, has been reluctant to give any details about what happened last week, and Crowell doesn't want to push too hard.

"She keeps telling me she's OK," Crowell said. "Physically she is, but emotionally and mentally ... it's going to take some time to coax the story out of her."

She's considering professional counselling for her daughter.

The ordeal began July 26. Key-Ley had spent the night at a friend's and was supposed to be home that morning.

"She called on Saturday to check in and said she'd be home in the morning," Crowell said. "Everything seemed fine."

She later found out the girls had gone shopping, but had run into another friend at the Southgate transit station. The first girl went home and Key-Ley went off with the new girl.

It was the last anyone saw of her until police found her in the field last Friday.

Crowell said all that Key-Ley told her so far is that the girl, whom Crowell had never heard her daughter mention before, took her to a party at a house.

"She just said there were some mean people there," Crowell said. "The details are really sketchy, but at some point she became scared."

Key-Ley's purse, along with a bus pass, was stolen.

Meanwhile, Crowell had begun searching for her daughter, phoning all her friends and contacting security at various malls. Nothing.

"She'd never done anything like this before, so I was getting really worried," she said.

On July 27, she called the Edmonton police, who also began searching for her.

Crowell and five other family members began scouring the streets. She put out the word on Facebook and soon family, friends and even total strangers across the country were volunteering to help.

A friend from their hometown of Fort Smith, N.W.T., set up a Facebook group that within hours had more than 600 members posting tips of possible sightings.

As the family searched the city, people offered to help in the hunt. Soon there were "a good couple dozen" combing the streets and putting up posters.

"Some were total strangers," Crowell said. "It was remarkable, the amount of support and concern."

The downtown Staples store, 10330 101 St., donated the poster material.

"It's devastating," she said. "It's the most helpless feeling you could ever have. Never in a million years did I expect that my daughter's face would be on a flyer."

ANDREW.HANON@SUNMEDIA.CA