Nothing nowadays seems safe from prying vehicle vigilantes — not even three-year-old Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. Though, at least one belonging to Dave Ford was returned to its owner Saturday afternoon... after the SF dog owner paid a $1K ransom.

ABC7's Luz Pena reported on a story yesterday where fur-father Dave Ford momentarily left his parked on Bush and Larkin Streets to run an errand Friday night around 10 p.m. — with his beloved best friend, Holly, waiting inside for his imminent return — and came back to not only find one of the vehicle's windows smashed open, but that Holly was also gone without a trace. Although, this story does have a happy ending, albeit one that required the payment of a $1K ransom to transpire.

"[My girlfriend and I] turned the corner and [the thief] was walking up, and he had a bag and he said 'I got her,'" said Ford to Pena about meeting the thief to get his pooch back after he and friends plastered a thousand-plus "stolen dog" flyers over the nearby area. He and his girlfriend, too, filed a report with the SFPD on the incident shortly after the incident occurred. (Though, according to The Chronicle, while car break-ins are down 3 percent, the vast majority — over 90 percent — of police-reported car burglaries still go unsolved.)

At 2:30 pm Saturday, Ford got a call from the thief, asking him for $1K in exchange for his dog. He agreed to pay the sum, without a second thought and was soon after reunited with Holly — but Ford hopes his ordeal is something other dog owners can glean from.

"It's getting to the point where dogs are being taken out of cars and windows are being broken for someone's pet," he adds to the news outlet. "Nothing can be left in a car."

This spat of news comes a week after SF's newest District Attorney Chesa Boudin told ABC7 he plans to start a car-window replacement program for those involved in a car burglary.

The caveat? Only the glass, itself, would be replaced — and there would be no reimbursement of the stolen contents. Even then, to say that you could put a price tag on someone's fur-child is as impractical as it is impossible.

Per KPIX, there were at least 23,309 reports of vehicle break-ins in 2019.

Related: Car Break-Ins Still Frequent In SF, But Down 3 Percent Over Last Year

Stolen Van Full of 30 Dogs Recovered In Oakland, 3 Dogs Missing

Image: Courtesy of Pixabay