New York’s Wild Whippet Chase Picks Up With Recent Sightings

By Wednesday afternoon, Flushing was one big dog trap. Whole roasted chickens had been left out as bait. A greyhound named Hubbard sauntered around Kissena Park, offering companionship. An 83-year-old man strolled with his belt in his hands, ready to lasso if necessary.

Few mysteries have captivated New Yorkers like the case of the champion whippet who, after winning a prize at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, got loose at John F. Kennedy airport five weeks ago and raced into the city.

The search for Vivi -- full name, Champion Bohem C’est La Vie -- has drawn in the Port Authority police force, scores of ardent dog lovers, multiple psychics and an Oklahoma pet detective who, when called about Vivi, turned down a job searching for B.B. King’s dog.

Now Vivi has begun to make appearances in Flushing, each one more tantalizing than the next. At 3:45 a.m. Wednesday, a man was walking his Doberman pinscher outside Flushing Cemetery when a whippet came to the cemetery fence and briefly touched noses with the Doberman before vanishing into the dark.

Searchers raced back and forth around Flushing all day. The dog’s co-owner, Jil Walton, had flown in from California and was walking the woods, trying to spread her scent. The suspense became unbearable.

“It’s like alcoholism,” said Bobbi Giordano, an animal rescue worker from Queens. “You just have to find out where, when, why. It’s an obsession now. I don’t think it has to do with the breed, or that it’s a famous dog or anything. I don’t even think it’s the money anymore. I think it’s just the love.”

Walton, who runs an equestrian center in Walnut, Calif., had dressed Vivi in a black wool coat for the trip back home from the dog show, where the dog had won a certificate of merit in the whippet category. The dog slipped out of her carrier before it was loaded onto the plane.

Vivi hurtled away down the runway for three miles, pursued by workers in Port Authority vehicles who clocked her speed at 25 mph. She reached the end of the runway and ducked through a fence into a marshy area as a Port Authority police officer watched helplessly from a distance of four feet.

The dog has been sighted more than a dozen times since she bolted from her crate, said Bonnie Folz, who has been coordinating the volunteer search. Vivi initially roamed long distances every day, but has begun to “tighten her boundaries,” said Karin Goin, a pet detective from Oklahoma who traced Vivi’s movements with tracking dogs.

“Vivi is considered a dog at large, living off her wits,” said Goin, who followed the trail through garbage piles and onto porches where people feed outdoor cats. The dog crossed through Jamaica, Queens, including areas where pit bulls were tied up, Goin said -- another in a series of traumas that left Vivi more skittish than usual.

“She’s displaced, and has no bonds to anybody here,” Goin said. “I’ve lived in cities, and I can assure you: New York was very different to me, and I’m a human.”

The dog’s disappearance prompted an extraordinary response, richly documented on “Vivi Watch,” a Newsday blog. Folz has received calls from a series of psychics, whom she views with skepticism.

“They say, ‘I see yellow equipment’ or ‘I see a big hangar with an airplane.’ Well, it’s an airport,” Folz said. “Or: ‘I see her in a shed. Somebody’s taking care of her and feeding her hamburgers. But she doesn’t like the lettuce.’ If you can tell she doesn’t like the lettuce, why can’t you tell me the door number of the building where she’s sitting?”

Most overwhelming are the volunteers -- more than 100 of them, including Rosa Chile, a retired bus driver who is undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer. Chile said she began searching at 6:30 every morning, stopping to take her pills, and continued to search in four shifts until 2 or 3 a.m.

“We have no life,” said Chile, 56. “We’re never home. I don’t clean the house anymore.”

Over the last week, Vivi has been sighted more than five times in Flushing, about nine miles north of the airport. A teenage girl called Friday to say she was walking behind the dog on Utopia Parkway. The same day, the whippet rushed up to a 12-year-old girl in her backyard, seemed to bow, and then ran away.

On Sunday, a man fed the whippet pieces of bread through the cemetery fence, Folz said. He tried to grab her and she bolted. Wednesday, after the 3:45 a.m. report, there were two more reported sightings nearby, the most recent at 6:30 p.m. Sightings are considered confirmed when the caller can identify markings that are not widely known.

Posters throughout the area advertise a $5,000 reward, which has brought another wave of searchers onto the scene. Among them is Vinny Chieffo, a cake delivery man, who has been scanning wooded areas after his shift ends at 3:30 a.m. Chieffo said his 14-year-old son wants to go to camp this summer, but the family could not afford it. The whippet seemed to offer an answer.

“I mean, I like dogs. I’d really like to see this person get her dog back,” said Chieffo, 48. “But I really need the money.”

At Kissena Park, it seemed almost everyone had picked up on the excitement. Three men chatted companionably on a park bench, but they were keeping an eye out. Rob Helriegel, 67, exposed a vest pocket to show that he was carrying a leash and a collar. Enrico Santarelli, 72, gave an animated demonstration of his plan to slip his belt around the dog’s neck. Their friend Kary Alexander smiled wickedly.

“You want that dog? I’ve got him in the attic,” said Alexander, 83. “I’m willing to go up to $10,000.”