Police are on the hunt for the people who stole a 700-pound stuffed dog from a Las Vegas charity.
The dog, named Mr Deeds, serves as the mascot for The Good Deed Project, a Las Vegas-based charity that helps individuals and families in need, and was stolen early on Tuesday morning.
Surveillance videos captured a black SUV circling the nonprofit's building the day before the mascot went missing. Mr Deeds was strapped and bolted down in the charity's parking lot at the time. Mandy Telleria, the Good Deed Project's executive director, told Fox 5 Vegas that she believes the thieves used the visits to the lot to unstrap and unbolt the dog.
Around 4am on Tuesday morning, the SUV returned with a trailer attached and backed up the mascot. A group of people exited the vehicle and pushed Mr Deeds onto the trailer, covered it with a tarp and drove off.
“I was in disbelief,” Telleria told the broadcaster. “How are you going to steal a 700 pound, 10 foot tall dog?”
Shortly after the dog was stolen, the project put up a page on its website asking for help finding it. Four days later, the charity recieved a tip that the dog had been spotted at an AutoZone on the other side of town, alongside the SUV and trailer.
According to Javier Montano, the Commercial Sales Manager at the AutoZone, someone was asleep in the driver's seat of an SUV in the car park as he arrived for work that morning.
The tipster who called Telleria also called 8 News Now. A representative from the charity drove down to AutoZone and the news crew arrived just as the driver was unhooking the trailer. Someone at the AutoZone blocked the SUV from leaving, but the driver ran off, hopped a fence, and darted off. Las Vegas Metro police arrived just as the driver fled the scene.
The trailer has since been impounded, but Telleria still wants to know who stole Mr Deeds in the first place. No arrests have been made in connection with the theft, but police reportedly have identified one suspect and are currently searching for them.
Mr Deeds is more than a mascot to the Good Deed Project volunteers and workers, Telleria told The Independent. Just as a family view their pets as family members, the chairty workers and volunteers also viewed Mr Deeds as an important part of their organization’s family, she said.
“When people come here for service days, the first thing they want to do is go pet the dog and take pictures with the dog. It helps us bring awareness to the community and its a birght light in what we do, cause it can be very stressful and hard to deal with because we see a lot of people dealing with challenges,” she added. “It puts a smile on everybody's face, just instantly.”
Unfortunately, Mr Deeds is still not back with The Good Deeds Project at this time. The mascot is considered evidence in an ongoing police investigation and, due to damage sustained in the theft, it will take time — and money — before it can be reintegrated into the organization’s daily operations.
There was more bad news for the charity, however, as days after the dog was stolen, someone else stole the platform it was mounted on outside their facility. It is another expense the chairty will have to foot before Mr Deeds is back to work and stalled day-to-day operations for about a week, as well as causing them to lose out on a $110,000 grant they were seeking.
Telleria hopes the group can have Mr Deeds repaired and back in their possession before their upcoming holiday programming. She said the group is open to any donors willing to assist them with the repairs that will need to be made to get the mascot operational again, as well as any donors hoping to assist in their usual work.
She advised anyone contemplating similar pranks to "think twice because you don't really know how much it could affect somebody."
