Dogged Chase Ends Canine Caper : Pet Store Aide Gets Her Man (by the Leg), Retrieves Stolen Pup

At $649, the bull terrier pup was the most expensive doggy in the window . . . er, store.

And, to hear store assistant manager Cassandra Crane recount the story Wednesday, the pooch was also too much for one man to resist.

The man reportedly snatched the dog from Pet City on Tuesday without paying but didn’t count on a hot pursuit by Crane, who drove after him, honking her horn and flashing her emergency lights, until the fleeing suspect was halted in an Anaheim intersection.

Then, when the man tried to escape from his van, Crane leaned against the vehicle’s door to keep him trapped. Eventually, officers came to arrest him.

“I wasn’t sure what I did,” Crane said. “I think I just blanked out. All I knew was that I wanted my dog back.”

A day after their adventure, Crane was back at work, the dog was playing with customers, and the suspect--identified by authorities as 58-year-old Gary Edward Walker--was being held in jail on $10,000 bail for suspicion of “grand theft--dog.”

Crane said she arrived at the pet store around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday to start her shift a little early. When she heard an employee say a man was walking out the door with a dog, Crane ran out to the parking lot. She happened to have her car keys in hand, and quickly drove off after the man, who was fleeing in a white Volkswagen van.

Crane followed the vehicle onto Katella Avenue and then Knott Avenue before it went onto Ball Road. The man briefly pulled into a Taco Bell, then went back onto Knott, made a few turns, and hit a car driven by a woman.

The unidentified woman then joined in the pursuit with Crane, who yelled at people along the way to call police.

At an intersection near Ball and Knott in Anaheim, traffic congestion caused the suspect to stop. A maintenance man for the Centralia School District who was eating lunch nearby heard all the commotion and went over to keep the man from getting away.

Crane said she came up and said: “He stole my dog, he stole my dog.”

She said the suspect kept trying to escape and at one point tried to leave through the passenger side of the van. Crane said she and the woman whose car was hit leaned against the van door to prevent him from leaving, even though his foot was sticking out the door.

“He said, ‘My foot! My foot!’ I said, ‘I’m not letting you go, you’re trying to run,’ ” Crane said.

Steven Reed, the maintenance employee, eventually held the man so Crane and the other woman could stop leaning on the door and the man could pull his foot in. Shortly afterward, the suspect was allowed to leave the van and sit on the curb until officers arrived.

“The police asked me what I was going to do with the guy when I caught him, and I said I didn’t know,” she said. “I’ve never had a dog stolen since I worked here, and I wasn’t going to now.” She has worked at the store for about a year.

Crane said the dog went to sleep after she brought him back to the shop. Looking like a slightly smaller version of Budweiser’s Spuds McKenzie party dog, only minus the black ring around one eye, the pup greeted customers playfully in the shop on Wednesday.

Store manager Jenna Gates said the pup seemed unharmed by the episode.

“The dog thought he was on a field trip, he was licking the cops and everything. He was happy,” she said.

She said the man who took the dog had been in the shop earlier in the day arguing about the price and left saying he was going to get the money to buy the dog.

“Instead, he came back, but had his car in the lot with its engine running,” she said.

Now, only Crane’s sore legs remind her of what happened on Tuesday, although she was lectured by the corporate office for putting herself in danger.

“It’s one thing when it’s money or merchandise, but when it’s a living, breathing animal . . . ,” she said, her voice trailing off. “If someone doesn’t have enough money to buy a dog, they probably don’t have enough money to feed it or take care of it.”