I was trying to get a timeline in my head and consider the distances between each location.
“Her grandparents dropped her off the morning of April 7, 1982 a few blocks from the Patrician Apartments at Nursery Road and Belcher Road. She planned to meet up with her uncle, Greg Richards, who was five years her senior and lived in the apartment complex, according to a sheriff's report.”
The Gparents drove 30+ miles from Holiday, FL to drop Wendy off but not at the apartment. This strikes me as odd, especially in that era. Why would they not drop her off in front of the uncle’s apartment building? Did they drop her off at a neighboring business? Maybe like the McDonald's so she could get a soda or something?
The intersection of Nursery Rd and Belcher Rd now has the Oakbrook Village Apartments. That is probably the original Patrician Apartments and maybe they were bought out, updated and renamed. There doesn’t appear to be another apartment complex within close proximity.
Countryside Mall is 6+ miles north of the apartments. So, if they grandparents dropped her off “a few blocks away” it wouldn’t have been at the mall.
“At some point, Huggy met with a friend named Kim and Kim's mother, who also lived at Patrician Apartments, deputies said. They went to Clearwater Beach.”
Maybe the uncle really didn’t see Wendy because she went to Kim’s apartment instead. Did Wendy call Kim prior to leaving Holiday? It would have been a landline call back then or maybe a payphone. Or, did Wendy just show up unannounced at Kim's apartment? I would think Kim's Mom would be able to verify this. Clearwater Beach is 7 miles from the Patrician apartments.
“Then, Huggy got a ride to Countryside Mall, where she called her grandfather.”
Countryside Mall is 10 miles northeast of Clearwater Beach.
So effectively, Wendy was within a 10 mile radius the last day she was seen. If I had to guess, I'd say the all the people she encountered that day were locals. Tourists wouldn't jump to give a kid a ride to a mall they didn't know the location of. It's not like they had a phone with GPS back then and could "wing it."
I'm fairly certain that Wendy knew her driver, maybe not well, but enough to be comfortable getting into a vehicle with them.
ETA to add map: