A scary situation for a Cochrane area family when their 12-year-old daughter went missing and spent a night alone outside Thursday.

RCMP Cpl. Troy Savinkoff said police were called about a girl who had walked away from a rural property near Lochend Road at around 6:30 p.m. 

Her family had been searching for her for about three hours but were unable to find her. 

"The 12-year-old-girl had been missing for a few hours and had walked away from the rural property. Now this is a quite a rural property with animals and the typical farm situation."  

Savinkoff said police utilized multiple resources during the search. 

"Any kind of search, the first thing that we do is we call in a police dog while the track is as fresh as it can be and we try our best to use the traditional means to do a track and find them. Ultimately that wasn't successful so we brought in the search team and brought in one of our new technologies, the drones." 

Cochrane and Calgary Search and Rescue teams came out to help search for the girl in addition to the police dog and RCMP drone. 

Police were on scene until after midnight, looking for the girl.

"The volunteer search with search and rescue teams was organized very early hours this morning." 

Thankfully the youth walked out of the bush at around 8 a.m. Friday and was found by a neighbour who then fed her.

The girl was then reunited with her family. 

"Cochrane RCMP would like to thank the Search and Rescue volunteers who came and assisted as well as members of the public for their quick thinking and kindness in assisting the youth until police arrived."