The Searchers : A Missing Dog and Its Worried Owner Cross Paths in Their Hunt for One Another

He’s looking for her. She’s looking for him.

That explains the strange ballet involving a search dog and an X-ray technician that has been taking place the last month on the streets of West Covina.

Max is a trained German shepherd K-9 dog that hopped a fence to hunt for his owner after being left overnight in an unfamiliar yard. Karen Crumpton is the distraught owner who has traveled hundreds of miles since then hunting for him--and leaving scented clues behind.

West Covina residents say that Max and Crumpton have narrowly missed each other numerous times since the animal’s Feb. 4 disappearance. Sometimes they have been a block or two apart. Other times only a matter of minutes have separated them.

“I saw him the morning she came by and put up a sign on the pole in front of us,” said Patricia Dailey, a 32-year resident of the neighborhood 20 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.

“The dog just seemed frantic. He ran down the sidewalk two or three houses, then turned around and ran around the corner.”

Betty Jo Larsen has encountered the tan and black animal twice. The first time she hadn’t seen one of Crumpton’s flyers offering a $300 reward for his return.

“I was walking my little poodle, Alfie, both times. The second time, I ran back to the apartment and threw Alfie inside and ran back to call him. But he was gone. I went out and bought a piece of rope in case I see him again.”

The close calls make it all the more frustrating for Crumpton, 29. She has taken leave from her medical clinic job to hunt full time for Max.

“He is trained to search. That’s why he ran off to begin with--to look for me,” she said. “He’s like my child. You wouldn’t give up if your child was missing.”

Crumpton has owned Max for five years. The German-born dog was purchased from a Riverside police K-9 dog training kennel by former Mt. San Antonio College track coach Jim Crumpton after his daughter received anonymous threats.

Like all police dogs, Max is trained to search and attack on command. His search for Crumpton is something he apparently initiated on his own, however.

When he disappeared, Max was staying overnight in West Covina with Crumpton’s aunt before moving to Crumpton’s new home in Dana Point. Hours later, the dog found his way across town to a house where Crumpton lived three years earlier.

The home’s current owner remembers seeing the dog pacing outside the front fence and looking mournfully inside.

Heidi Do learned later that the dog was Max. “One day earlier I’d have known and just opened the door for him to get in,” she said.

Crumpton has tied a shirt to Do’s fence for Max to sniff if he returns. She has also placed food and water next to it.

Crumpton said she spent three hours one day calling Max’s name from Mt. San Antonio College’s hilly cross country track, where he used to run with her father. A German shepherd barked in response from the distance. But echoes in the area kept her from pinpointing where the sound was coming from.

At 11 one night, West Covina police encountered her as she stood on a Holt Street corner, calling Max’s name. Despite the lateness of the hour, they let her use their patrol car’s loud speaker.

“I have Arrowhead water guys looking for him. Postmen. School kids. Everybody . . . ,” she said.

Along the way, Crumpton has hired a professional pet-hunting service, become friends with animal shelter workers and stopped to inspect dogs that have been killed by cars.

On Tuesday, Crumpton was at it again. A tip that Max had been seen in La Puente took her there at 5:30 a.m. She drove around for hours, looking and calling his name, until her car conked out.

She grabbed her flyers and dog biscuits and set out to call a tow truck. “I figured the sweat from my hand would leave my scent on the biscuits. I left a mile-and-a-half trail of them,” she said.

Crumpton said she won’t give up on her search dog. That’s because she’s convinced he hasn’t given up on her.

“I know he’ll always be looking for me,” she said.