Handling RichText Area with Javascript

Hello guys, I'm trying to insert text via javascript into a rich cftextarea but it doesn't work since it's not really a textarea but an iframe.

The following code alerts "Frank" with javascript at runtime

<cftextarea richtext="true" name="richTop" id="richTop">Frank</cftextarea>

but after writing new text in it and calling the value of "richTop", still returns Frank (Getting the field by name or ID).

Does anyone know how to manipulate rich text areas with js? I also noticed the iframes have ID's but they are created at runtime and change all the time.

thanks!