SF woman who crowdsourced $11K to find stolen dog finally finds him, 4 months later

A lost dog, Jackson, who was stolen outside of The Good Life Grocery store in Bernal Heights back in December, was found at an animal shelter in Los Angeles on Monday. A lost dog, Jackson, who was stolen outside of The Good Life Grocery store in Bernal Heights back in December, was found at an animal shelter in Los Angeles on Monday. Photo: Emilie Talermo Photo: Emilie Talermo Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close SF woman who crowdsourced $11K to find stolen dog finally finds him, 4 months later 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

On Dec. 14, 2019, San Francisco resident Emilie Talermo's dog went missing outside of a Bernal Heights grocery store. Her extreme efforts to find the dog, an Australian shepherd named Jackson, made plenty of headlines — she crowdsourced nearly $11,000 as a reward for Jackson, distributed so many flyers around the city that his face became ubiquitous to San Franciscans, launched a website for the cause and even hired a pilot to fly a banner over the city with his information.

But as the months stretched on, finding Jackson seemed less and less likely. Until yesterday.

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On Monday, Talermo received a call from an animal shelter in Los Angeles, she told the San Francisco Chronicle. The shelter had scanned Jackson's microchip and discovered Talermo's contact information. Unable to pick him up herself — her car had died just an hour before the shelter called, she told The Chronicle — a San Francisco Police Department detective who was assigned to her case drove to Los Angeles to retrieve the dog, who some friends had picked up from the shelter.

At 4 a.m. Tuesday morning, dog and owner were reunited, Talermo posted on her Instagram story.

She shared a video of the dog leaping out of a carrier and into her arms, licking her face and barking while she exclaimed in delight. Later on Tuesday morning, she also posted a photo of herself hugging the dog with the caption #broughtjacksonhome.

On Tuesday afternoon, the San Francisco Police Department announced that an arrest had been made for the theft of Jackson. Over the past few months of law enforcement’s investigation into the theft, a turning point occurred when the dog was spotted by community members in Los Angeles County. Law enforcement was able to identify the suspect, and on April 17, 27-year-old Nicholas Bravo, a Palmdale, CA resident, was arrested for felony grand theft.

Bravo was already in custody at San Joaquin County Jail for unrelated matters. He has been cited to appear in San Francisco Superior Court this summer.

SFGATE has reached out to Emilie Talermo for comment and will update the story if we hear back.

This story has been updated to reflect new details on the dognapping case from SFPD.

Madeline Wells is an SFGATE associate digital reporter. Email: madeline.wells@sfgate.com | Twitter: @madwells22