when I was little I would regularly sell strawberries at the end of my road.. by myself..my road was in a suburban/rural area with a county road, well traveled...I must have been about 8 or 10....that was in NYS as well...
Sigh, people feel safe in rural areas, but as a big city girl I always doubt that’s true.
It’s basically a matter of the odds.
To my mind there are probably fewer bad people in rural areas, because there are just fewer people.
But my concern is always that if some bad person does come along, there are no other people around to help.
And in this case their family was right there, but not close enough to stop the abduction.