HOMESTEAD, FLA. (WSVN) - A Miami-Dade Police K-9 that had been reported missing in Homestead, Friday afternoon, was found safe after resident spotted him in her front yard.
7 Skyforce HD flew over the scene where the dog was located, near 16th Street and Northwest Ninth Avenue. Police received a phone call from resident Jennifer Amparo-Aguirre, who saw the dog outside her residence.
The dog, named Mikey, was reunited with officers and its handler, then placed in the back of a Miami-Dade Police cruiser at around 4:45 p.m.
Police said Mikey must have gotten spooked by lightning sometime before 2 p.m., then likely crawled under a fence and ran away from his handler’s house in the area of Southwest 304th Street and 187th Avenue.
The friendly 5-year-old Belgium Malinois made it about three quarters of a mile away before stopping at Amparo-Aguirre’s house. “I came up to him and he just sat up and greeted me like, ‘Hey, what’s up?'” she said.
Amparo-Aguirre, who has three children, two dogs, two cats, a turtle, a rabbit, a fish and a duck, gave water and food to Mikey. She posted his picture on Facebook, then noticed another post with his picture on social media.
“It was this post, and then this was the post that caught my attention,” Amparo-Aguirre said.
She saw the update on the 7News Facebook page about the search for Mikey, and put the two together. “I’m glad for social media … and the actual post from Channel 7, because I would have still had him back here,” she said.
Police were glad Mikey wound up at the right home. “He’s, you know, one of our officers,” said Miami-Dade Police Lt. Jeff Schmidinger. “Mikey has caught a lot of people, you know, robbers, burglars, you name it.”
Amparo-Aguirre even has paw prints tattooed on her arm, and this isn’t the first time she’s been on 7News.
She invited 7News cameras into her hospital room in 2009 after she was bitten by a 500-pound Syrian brown bear while volunteering at the Everglades Outpost. “Yeah, he was hungry and he bit my finger,” she said back then.
Despite that attack, Amparo-Aguirre still rescues as many animals as she can. “That’s not going to stop me. It’s not their fault; it was mine,” she said.
And when she saw Mikey, she knew it was fate. Coincidentally, she’s already pet sitting for a Miami-Dade Police officer who’s on vacation.
Just as Amparo-Aguirre was calling 911 for Mikey, the wife of a Miami-Dade officer came to her door and helped her get Mikey back where she belongs. “Well, that’s a cop dog, so I guess it’s a big deal,” she said.
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