Posted on 02/10/2011 4:00:39 PM PST by SwinneySwitch
DONNA — Some might say Ken Mol was fortunate to recover his truck after it was stolen from outside the Walmart in Weslaco two weeks ago.
He would give it away if only he could find what was left inside.
“I don’t think he’d come out of the truck himself, they’d have to pull him out,” Mol said.
Since U.S. Border Patrol agents found his truck Jan. 28, Mol and his wife, Tina, have been looking for Hogan, their Labrador-Shepherd mix dog.
Almost 6 years old, the canine was resting in the extended cab of Mol’s 2005 Ford F-250 pickup truck when drug smugglers stole it from the Walmart parking lot.
Mol, a 63-year-old retired auto worker from Ontario, Canada, said he never expected the cross-border flow of narcotics to directly affect him. It’s the first year he has wintered in the Rio Grande Valley with his wife; they’d only gone to Florida before.
“I suppose, you know, it’s next to the border and bad things are happening,” Mol said. “But why would they target me?”
Weslaco police spokesman Danny Elizondo said Mol’s story is not uncommon. Drug smugglers commonly target trucks like Mol’s either to haul loads across the Rio Grande or to sell in Mexico. Losing a dog during an auto theft is less typical, though.
“They steal them to take across, bring the load over and dump the truck somewhere,” Elizondo said. “Other times they steal them and take them into Mexico.”
Mol said he was surprised to learn his truck was recovered, mostly. When he picked it up from Weslaco police, he said he didn’t have to show any ID and drove off without signing any paperwork.
In the day his truck was missing, the thieves painted the rear windows black and took most of the valuables from inside. Traces of mud were inside the back, likely from marijuana bundles, police said.
But what happened to his dog remains a mystery.
“He is an inside dog,” Mol said. “He is my buddy.”
Since Hogan went missing, Mol has spent time driving up and down Farm-to-Market Road 88 and Salinas Boulevard, south of Donna, where Border Patrol found the truck after a chase.
“I don’t really care about the truck,” Mol said. “I just want Hogan back.”
Prayers up.
Ping!
Ditto!
Poor little guy.
Prayers up for Hogan’s safe return to his family!!
This is one couple who will go back to Florida for future winters.
A similar story a couple of months ago had a happy ending. I think it was a Golden Retriever or a Lab, guy's truck was stolen from a Bass Pro parking lot and he offered an enormous reward for the dog . . . and the dog was returned. Don't think he got the truck back though.
I personally would have told the guy to keep the money if I could go bird hunting with him and J.B. . . . but that's just me.
How horrible. What an awful thing to do to someone and their dog. I hope this story has a happy ending.
Time to suspend both habeui corpus and due process for Mexican nationals suspected of drug smuggling.
Sad story.
Let’s hope the dog manages to find a good home if he doesn’t find his master.
If the subhuman trash known as drug cartel smugglers are involved I seriously doubt it, unfortunately.
We sent Gen. Black Jack Pershing and a young Lt. George Patton into Mexico back in 1912 after border-crossing bandits Pancho Villa and Jose Cardenas. Patton brought Cardenas’ bullet-riddled body back tied across the hood of his car like a deer. Patton had walked into Cardenas’ headquarters and personally emptied his pistol into the Villa henchman.
“I don’t really care about the truck,” Mol said. “I just want Hogan back.”
Have owned two of these breeds, I would have done the same for either of them. You must own one of these Golden’s to know how mentally close to human they can be.
They didn’t return his dog?
Get a Rope!
Prayers up for Hogan and his family.
One of my great grandfathers was a Welsh collier, a miner who traveled around North America working in mines.
The whole family traveled with him and while down in Mexico working at a mine, Pancho Villa shows up.
Villa gathers all the non-Hispanic miners and their families together at gunpoint, forces everyone into the mine, then starts to emplace TNT around the mine entrance. He told the miners he was going to bury everyone alive.
Before the mine was blown, Pershing showed up to their rescue.
When my great grandfather and family escaped from there they headed for British Columbia, Canada, via California. My grandmother told me, she and one of her sisters decided they had had enough of mining camps and while in San Francisco remained to make it their home. It was there she met my grandfather, a Petty Officer in the USN.
If that shepherd in the dog kicks in, he’ll find his way back home. Even if it takes years.
We were stopped at a road block in Mexico. They said they were the Mexican army, I guess they were because they let us go afterward and didn't steal anything.
While they searched our truck they held automatic weapons pointed at us. That will make you stand still! I figured we were dead while we waited for them to finish looking for whatever in our truck.
That was one of the events that made us decide to never go to Mexico again.
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