YUKON’S TREK : Policeman Proves a Bloodhound in Dogged Hunt for Missing Pooch

Yukon, a golden retriever from Alaska, had just arrived in Orange County last week when he strayed from the Huntington Beach home where he had been left by owner Jerry Reich and began to roam the streets.

Pretty soon, he was hanging out with the street folk in Newport Beach and sniffing around the dory boatmen’s catch by the pier. Within a week, he was traded six times and sold at least once, traveled as far as Lake Elsinore and wound up living in a Newport Beach home.

Were it not for the efforts of Newport Beach Police Officer Mike Deladurantey, Reich, 23, might never have seen his dog again.

“He did just an incredible investigation,” Reich said. “He chased my dog all over the county.”

Deladurantey first spotted Yukon Dec. 10 cruising with a transient and thought they seemed an odd pair. The sight bothered him so much that night that he looked for the transient the next day and asked him where the dog was and who owned it.

Unfortunately, the fellow didn’t have the dog anymore. He couldn’t afford to take care of it and had traded it to a fellow transient.

‘Couldn’t Take Care of It’

The new owner and his friends “either gave it away or sold it because they couldn’t take care of it,” Deladurantey said.

“None of them can afford a dog,” the officer said. “And this one’s 75 pounds at a year and a half.”

Deladurantey then visited the Newport Beach Pier, which is frequented by street people. There, the dory boatmen told him that the retriever had been found tied to a post on Pacific Coast Highway near 13th Street in Huntington Beach.

Eventually, Deladurantey found other street people who had taken Yukon briefly and then given him up.

The trail heated up when he discovered that one of the men had given the dog to a construction worker rebuilding the Blue Beet Cafe that was destroyed in an April fire.

The construction worker was going to give Yukon to his father, who lives in Lake Elsinore, and even took the dog out there. But for some reason, the man changed his mind and gave it to a neighbor, who in turn sold him to someone in Newport Beach.

When he heard the story, the construction worker “took it upon himself to find the dog,” Deladurantey said.

Two Reunited

Tuesday morning, the construction worker--no one on Tuesday could remember his name--took Yukon into the Police Department headquarters. Deladurantey was off work that day, but he had left with an animal control officer a telephone number copied from a flyer carrying Yukon’s photo. Just hours later, man and dog were reunited.

“It was the best Christmas present I ever got,” said Reich, who had left Yukon with his parents while he went to register at Utah State University. He plans to obtain a master’s degree in international economics.

Reich, who said he bought Yukon for $350 in Madison, Wis., in October, 1985, called his retriever “half champion show dog and half field trial dog.” After graduation from the University of Wisconsin, he took a year off and headed for Alaska, living briefly in Fairbanks before working as a salmon fisherman near Cordova.

He and Yukon “lived in a tent in a bay on a big island about 100 miles from the nearest port.” When he wasn’t working, the two would do some hunting and chase seals (“never catch ‘em, just chase ‘em.”)

Reich said that when he got the call from Newport Beach Animal Control Officer Michelle Caldwell on Tuesday morning, “I was real emotional.”

“They gave me directions, but I guess I headed the wrong way. I wound up in Santa Ana before I realized what I’d done.”