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Thieves Take Family’s Car With Puppy Inside, Return For Second Vehicle Later

The Andersons are moving from Texas to Oregon and stopped in Arvada, Colorado, for a night’s rest at a relative’s house. That proved to be the worst choice they could have made.
Couple's Ford Fusion is stolen, thieves return for their second car after 2 days 11 photos
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It wasn’t even light out yet when they were getting ready to hit the road: they wanted to get an early start, Cheliesa Anderson tells The Denver Channel. The husband had loaded one of the puppies (they have 2) inside their black Ford Fusion and turned around to grab some more stuff from inside the house.

He didn’t leave the engine running, Anderson says. However the car was keyless and he had left the fob inside, so by the time he came back, it was gone – puppy and all.

“He grabbed the dog and the diaper bag, walked back out and the car was gone,” the woman tells the publication. “We really just want the dog back.”

That same day, Anderson saw the car outside a local Walmart. “I thought I was just going crazy, but when they turned I saw it because the bottom part of our bumper is gone. So there's two plastic things that hang down that you can see visibly and Texas plates.”

She told the police that but they had some trouble tracking down the missing vehicle. And the Andersons’ story gets even worse: on the same keychain that had the fob for the Ford Fusion was the key fob to the family’s other car, and the thieves came back after a couple of days.

By this time, the family had decided to stay in Arvada a while longer, allowing the police time to recover their car. The thieves came and broke into the other car but they couldn’t start it because its battery had died; so they raided everything they found, including the ashes of the woman’s aunt and her jewelry.

The Andersons are still planning to get to Oregon, but they know the journey will be longer now. They’ve set up a donations page and are halfway to reaching their goal, which will allow them to rent a car to see them to their destination.

The stolen car has been retrieved but it got totaled in the police car chase that led to the suspects’ arrest. Nothing else of what had been stolen was recovered.
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About the author: Elena Gorgan
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Elena has been writing for a living since 2006 and, as a journalist, she has put her double major in English and Spanish to good use. She covers automotive and mobility topics like cars and bicycles, and she always knows the shows worth watching on Netflix and friends.
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