"We are overwhelmed with joy over how supportive everyone has been to bring us together as a family again," Koester said. "Everyone's tireless efforts has made our family whole this Thanksgiving. We cannot thank you enough."
"She has been through a very traumatic event and needs time with her family," Koester said. "I don't have any details into the case, I just know that getting her face out there was the best thing we could do."
When asked about the sisters' reunion, Koester only said, "It was a very joyous reunion, and we were just very, very excited to see each other."
Koester was asked how she and the family handled Papini going missing for three weeks, but gave very little insight into how the family coped with her disappearance.
"It's been a range of emotions -- sadness,
anger," Koester said. "Right now, it's just joy, lots and lots of joy."
Sherri Papini, who was found alive Thanksgiving morning near Interstate 5 in Yolo County, was "
very emotional" after a passing driver came upon her, Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko said Friday.
Investigators are searching for two armed Hispanic women driving a dark-colored SUV whom detectives believe abducted Papini on Nov. 2 while she was out for a jog near her home the Shasta County town of Mountain Gate, Bosenko said.
In an interview Friday on "Good Morning America," Bosenko called it very rare for her to be released.
Papini was found Thursday bound by restraints near I-5 and County Road 17 but was able to flag down a driver, who called authorities and connected the mother of two with her husband, Keith, by cellphone, Bosenko said.
She was very emotional to be released and hear her husband's voice and then a few hours later to be reunited with him," Bosenko said.
Papini was treated at a hospital for unspecified injuries and released. Officials said they were not aware of a motive for the kidnapping.
Investigators have spoken with Papini
but hoped to get more information soon in the effort to uncover what happened over the last three weeks, Bosenko said. It was not clear if she knew the women she said abducted her, police said.
Obviously she was
emotional and quite upset, but elated to be freed, and so we were able to get some information from her," Bosenko said. "Then, in the days following this, we will be following up with her."
Family members previously called her a "super mom" who would never abandon her family. Her husband reported her missing when she failed to pick up their two young children from day care.
Her cellphone and headphones were found near where she was last seen.
"She could drop her phone, but she would never in a million years not pick up our children at the time that she normally would have," Keith Papini told "Good Morning America" before his wife was found.
Her husband was cleared as a suspect after passing a polygraph test. Before she was found, he said he was "
getting very angry and frustrated" and "scared for my wife."