Los Angeles , California ( CNN ) -- Police say one thing was clear when authorities showed up at a house in Arizona looking for a California girl who had been missing for seven years . The family inside was hiding something . They were `` evasive and untruthful , '' said Capt . Patrick Maxwell of the Los Angeles County Sheriff 's Department 's Norwalk Station . When family members were asked to produce a birth certificate or adoption papers for Amber Rose Nicklas , they could not . Maxwell says that is when they admitted the 7-year-old girl was not theirs . The child had been missing since September 2003 . She was in the care of foster parents in Norwalk , California , when she was snatched by three of her aunts . Two of the aunts were caught at the time but a third got away with the infant . Maxwell says it appears Amber had been living with the same family in Phoenix , Arizona , for most of the time she was missing , but police are still investigating how she ended up with people who are not her biological family . Authorities got a tip that Amber could be at a home in Phoenix and went there with a court order Wednesday afternoon . When investigators tried to serve the court order , they found that a woman in the home had hidden the child in a shower under a pile of clothes and towels , said Phoenix police Sgt . Trent Crump . Amber 's identity had been changed , including her name and date of birth , police said . Authorities confirmed Amber 's real identity through footprints , photographs and DNA swabs . The child is in state custody in California and prosecutors will file charges , Crump said . CNN 's Nick Valencia and Sonya Hamasaki contributed to this report .
Police say the California family holding the girl was `` evasive and untruthful '' Amber is now in the custody of Arizona authorities . Girl 's identity is confirmed through footprints and a DNA swab . The girl was abducted from California in a year old when she was 2003 .