A former Peachtree City resident Friday evening reported a happy ending to a tale of two 13-year-old girls taking an unauthorized joyride to Florida.

"Olivia has just called home," an e-mail from the Carpenter family of Meriwether County said shortly after 8 p.m. Friday. "She and her friend are OK. The police department has them, [and] we are on our way to get them."

The pair were identified in the lookouts as Olivia Joe Stanford, and her best friend, Dorothy Baum.

The two former Peachtree City girls had been out of touch with their families for more than 15 hours, the parents said.

The pair, both three years shy of being old enough to legally drive a vehicle, took a 12-year-old van from the residence of one of the girls in LaGrange, Ga., around 2 a.m. Friday.

The girls left a note saying they were going to Panama City, telling their parents not to call police and saying they’d be back Saturday, Mary Carpenter said.

Police had placed a national “be on the lookout” alert for the vehicle and the two girls.

Law enforcement authorities had declined to issue a statewide Amber Alert because the girls were not abducted, Carpenter was told.

The case was being investigated by authorities in LaGrange and Troup County in addition to those in Meriwether County; Panama City police were also aware of the situation, Carpenter said.

The girls and Baum’s mother had just returned Thursday from a trip they had taken together to Florida, Carpenter noted.

Though the Carpenters moved to Meriwether County less than two months ago, Mrs. Carpenter still works in Fayetteville as a certified medical assistant at Peachtree Immediate Care.