Doggone : But Ginger Is Back After Ransom Is Paid; Man Seized

Ginger the poodle is home after a dognaping adventure that had the earmarks of a bad made-for-TV movie, complete with late-night calls, weird ransom instructions and clues left in phone booths.

“She was tickled to death when she saw me,” Maryetta Selle, a retired psychologist and college administrator, told reporters on Thursday. “She was shaking like a leaf; she’d been in so many hands that she was scared to death.”

The reunion marked the end of a bizarre plot that included a ransom payment of $2,500, one man arrested for alleged extortion and five days of agony for Selle.

“I’ve never lost a child,” Selle said after she got Ginger back, “but this seems almost as good as finding a lost child. I’ve had her and loved her for four years; she’s almost a family member.”

The strange saga began last Friday when Ginger--a pedigreed, cream-colored poodle--wandered out the front gate of the ocean-view home she shares with Selle in this Orange County beach community.

As soon as she realized the dog was gone, Selle said, she frantically searched the neighborhood. Later that night, Selle said, she got a phone call from a woman demanding $5,000 for the return of the dog.

“I was shocked,” the dog owner recalls. “I never expected anything like that. I told them I didn’t have that kind of money.”

In a series of midnight phone calls from the dognapers, Selle got them to lower their ransom demand to $3,500 and, later, to $2,500. The dognapers instructed her to park her car outside a nearby Bakers’ Square restaurant, leave the money on the floor and go inside to drink coffee until they paged her with word that the dog was in the car.

Selle, however, was suspicious: “That was the old pigeon drop,” she said. “I’d come out and my car would be gone.”

Finally, acting on Selle’s behalf, a friend spent most of Tuesday night in Huntington Beach, eventually leaving the cash in a phone booth where the dognapers had left Ginger’s collar as proof that they had her.

The next day, a man delivered Ginger to a Huntington Beach animal shelter where workers, alerted to the situation, made two immediate phone calls. One was to Selle to tell her that her dog was OK. The other was to police, who showed up within minutes and arrested David R. Baker of Midway City.

Charged with attempted extortion, Baker, 25, is being held at the Newport Beach jail with bail set at $10,000. The ransom has not been recovered.

Selle and Ginger, meanwhile, spent Thursday afternoon basking in the glow of each other’s company.

“She was so dirty and scrungy,” the self-described animal lover said of Ginger’s appearance upon the poodle’s return. Yet all is well that ends well. “She’s my best friend,” Selle said. “(From now on) I’m going to make sure she’s in the house.”