She Pulled Out All the Stops for Stolen Dog. It Worked

4 months later, Jackson is back home
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Apr 22, 2020 2:34 AM CDT
She Pulled Out All the Stops for Stolen Dog. It Worked
In this photo provided by Emilie Talermo, she is shown after being reunited with her six-year-old dog Jackson in San Francisco, on Tuesday, April 21, 2020.   (Courtesy of Emilie Talermo via AP)

Four months after a distraught San Francisco woman hired a plane to fly a search banner for her stolen dog, the blue-eyed mini Australian shepherd has been found and the two were reunited Tuesday. Emilie Talermo, 31, said she received a call Monday from an animal shelter in Palmdale, which is about 370 miles away in Southern California, telling her someone had just dropped off a dog with a microchip connected to her phone number, the AP reports. To be sure it was her 6-year-old dog, Jackson, Talermo asked the shelter to send her photos. “As soon as I saw them, I burst into tears. It was him!” Talermo said. Talermo launched a search on Dec. 14, when the dog with white, black, and gray fur and bright blue eyes was stolen from outside a grocery store in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights neighborhood.

She set up a website where she offered a $7,000 reward, “no questions asked,” and even opened an account for the sweet-faced dog on Tinder. She also hired a plane to fly a banner with the search website over San Francisco and Oakland. On Monday, friends in Santa Monica drove to Palmdale to pick up Jackson. Talermo was unable to drive herself to Southern California, but the San Francisco Police Department detective assigned to her case offered to drive to Santa Monica and bring Jackson back home. The officer arrived in San Francisco with Jackson early Tuesday and let the dog out of a crate for a reunion with Talermo full of laughter, squeals, and wiggles, a video of their encounter after four months apart showed. The shelter didn’t say who dropped Jackson off but whoever had him fed him well because he returned home a little chunkier and doesn’t seem “too traumatized,” Talermo said.

(More uplifting news stories.)

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