Kristy
08-23-2005, 05:18 PM
LOST DOG RETURNED AFTER COUPLE
JULIE AND Alan Hochman were returning to their car after going to the movies on a recent evening when they saw an old woman in distress.
She was standing next to a taxicab near 2nd and Walnut streets and struggling to pick up packages from the sidewalk.
"She couldn't quite get to them. I walked over and asked if she needed a hand," Julie said.
It turned out the taxi driver had put the woman out of his cab after driving her around for a while because she couldn't tell him where she wanted to go. She was confused, and he was irate.
Julie and Alan didn't want to leave her on the street. So Alan called a phone number on a business card the woman had with her, located her sister, and her sister gave the taxi driver the correct address. Problem solved.
The grateful woman asked Julie what she could do for her in return.
"I laughed and said, 'Nothing.' "
Julie and Alan are my next-door neighbors, whom I wrote about recently when their 13-year-old Bichon Frise, Annie, disappeared.
On the night they went to the movies, Annie had been gone for nearly three weeks. After posting signs and searching everywhere, they'd all but given up hope of getting her back.
Still, when they got in the car to go home that night, Julie sighed aloud:
"I wish someone would do a good deed like that for us and bring Annie back."
Two days later, Annie came home.
Annie, aging and confused, had wandered off on July 25. Julie and Alan had done everything to find her, from newspaper ads to police reports to the futile pursuit of false leads responding to their neighborhood fliers.
She was beloved, as most pets are. But Annie also had a special place in Julie and Alan's life. Alan had bought her as a puppy in a surprise effort to console Julie after the couple was told they could never have children.
"She really was my baby," Julie said.
They eventually did have twins. Jenna and Sam had grown up with Annie, and Jenna had expressed fear when the kids left for overnight camp this summer that Annie would die while they were away.
Two nights after they helped the old woman, a bereft Julie and Alan sat down to decide how to tell the twins Annie was gone. They were coming home from camp the next morning.
Then the phone rang. Nora Flores was on the other end.
"I think I have your dog," she said.
Flores was driving a friend to a hospital near Bala Cynwyd when she saw Annie walking in the middle of busy Belmont Avenue the day she disappeared from home. She scooped Annie up to save her from being hit by a car.
Flores feared the SPCA would put her to sleep. So she took Annie home to Upper Darby and told the friend to look for posters for a lost dog when she came back through Bala Cynwyd.
Somehow, the friend initially failed to see the dozens of fliers Julie and Alan had posted all over the neighborhood.
Flores, 36, said she and her three children treated Annie "like family."
They named her Lulu and bought her a pink collar, a leash and her own dish.
"I love animals. My kids love animals," Flores said.
But Flores knew she belonged to someone else.
"I know she was missing someone. I could feel it."
And she knew what it was like to mourn for a pet. Last year, the family's Maltese, Tequila, vanished for a week before someone brought her back.
Nearly three weeks passed before Flores' friend drove through Bala Cynwyd again - and finally saw the fliers about Annie.
By then, Julie and Alan had been through a roller coaster of hope and bitter disappointment and had come to believe that Annie was gone for good.
Then, out of nowhere, Flores called.
"We were ecstatic," Julie said.
The small dramas of everyday life - like a lost pet - rarely make the newspapers; they're simply too commonplace.
But when they do, they often touch us more than the big news stories, because we see ourselves in them.
That's why so many of you have called and e-mailed to ask if Annie ever came home.
Annie's homecoming is especially significant to Julie, who believes with all her heart that it had something to do with the old woman they helped out two days before - whose name, she thinks, is Alice Church.
"I just thought it was like a miracle," she said.
"I keep telling Alan it was Alice Church. Alice Church brought us back our Annie."
http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/local/12450967.htm
JULIE AND Alan Hochman were returning to their car after going to the movies on a recent evening when they saw an old woman in distress.
She was standing next to a taxicab near 2nd and Walnut streets and struggling to pick up packages from the sidewalk.
"She couldn't quite get to them. I walked over and asked if she needed a hand," Julie said.
It turned out the taxi driver had put the woman out of his cab after driving her around for a while because she couldn't tell him where she wanted to go. She was confused, and he was irate.
Julie and Alan didn't want to leave her on the street. So Alan called a phone number on a business card the woman had with her, located her sister, and her sister gave the taxi driver the correct address. Problem solved.
The grateful woman asked Julie what she could do for her in return.
"I laughed and said, 'Nothing.' "
Julie and Alan are my next-door neighbors, whom I wrote about recently when their 13-year-old Bichon Frise, Annie, disappeared.
On the night they went to the movies, Annie had been gone for nearly three weeks. After posting signs and searching everywhere, they'd all but given up hope of getting her back.
Still, when they got in the car to go home that night, Julie sighed aloud:
"I wish someone would do a good deed like that for us and bring Annie back."
Two days later, Annie came home.
Annie, aging and confused, had wandered off on July 25. Julie and Alan had done everything to find her, from newspaper ads to police reports to the futile pursuit of false leads responding to their neighborhood fliers.
She was beloved, as most pets are. But Annie also had a special place in Julie and Alan's life. Alan had bought her as a puppy in a surprise effort to console Julie after the couple was told they could never have children.
"She really was my baby," Julie said.
They eventually did have twins. Jenna and Sam had grown up with Annie, and Jenna had expressed fear when the kids left for overnight camp this summer that Annie would die while they were away.
Two nights after they helped the old woman, a bereft Julie and Alan sat down to decide how to tell the twins Annie was gone. They were coming home from camp the next morning.
Then the phone rang. Nora Flores was on the other end.
"I think I have your dog," she said.
Flores was driving a friend to a hospital near Bala Cynwyd when she saw Annie walking in the middle of busy Belmont Avenue the day she disappeared from home. She scooped Annie up to save her from being hit by a car.
Flores feared the SPCA would put her to sleep. So she took Annie home to Upper Darby and told the friend to look for posters for a lost dog when she came back through Bala Cynwyd.
Somehow, the friend initially failed to see the dozens of fliers Julie and Alan had posted all over the neighborhood.
Flores, 36, said she and her three children treated Annie "like family."
They named her Lulu and bought her a pink collar, a leash and her own dish.
"I love animals. My kids love animals," Flores said.
But Flores knew she belonged to someone else.
"I know she was missing someone. I could feel it."
And she knew what it was like to mourn for a pet. Last year, the family's Maltese, Tequila, vanished for a week before someone brought her back.
Nearly three weeks passed before Flores' friend drove through Bala Cynwyd again - and finally saw the fliers about Annie.
By then, Julie and Alan had been through a roller coaster of hope and bitter disappointment and had come to believe that Annie was gone for good.
Then, out of nowhere, Flores called.
"We were ecstatic," Julie said.
The small dramas of everyday life - like a lost pet - rarely make the newspapers; they're simply too commonplace.
But when they do, they often touch us more than the big news stories, because we see ourselves in them.
That's why so many of you have called and e-mailed to ask if Annie ever came home.
Annie's homecoming is especially significant to Julie, who believes with all her heart that it had something to do with the old woman they helped out two days before - whose name, she thinks, is Alice Church.
"I just thought it was like a miracle," she said.
"I keep telling Alan it was Alice Church. Alice Church brought us back our Annie."
http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/local/12450967.htm