The sounds of 2015 ringing in over Goodyear is what spooked Frank Giron's dogs. The two German Shepherds forced open his back gate and ran out.
"We were looking for them all over the neighborhood and they were gone," Giron said. His older dog, Tobi, eventually came back but Xica, was lost.
"We posted fliers around the neighborhood and nothing," he said. Trips to the pound were also a dead end. Out of options, Giron decided to go online for help. "I was very, very surprised," he said. "There was a whole community."
Giron couldn't believe it, countless websites and social media pages -- an entire network of people dedicated to doing exactly what he needed: reuniting lost pets with their owners.
"Some people are just kind of stuck, they're freaking out," said Cindy Goetz, a volunteer for Lost Dogs Arizona.
Goetz is one of 20 volunteers that help the non-profit provide pet owners with tactical and emotional support.
"We have these Arizona-specific action plans," Goetz said. First thing, get the word out. While fliers are helpful, the real resources are online.
"We've got people that are really good at finding dogs in the woods or out in the desert, it's amazing," she said.
Still, their biggest tool is networking. Once a dog is posted, an underground movement takes over -- strangers sharing pictures thousands of times as volunteer detectives search online databases.
"There's this whole group of people that follow us," said Goetz.
"We were getting reports every day of a potential match but none of them were Xica," Giron said.
For Goetz, the search is a race against the clock. In Arizona, a dog without tags is held for a minimum of 72 hours. Once that expires, the canine can go up for adoption or be euthanized. "It's emotionally overwhelming for a lot of people, it really is," she said.
Knowing that, when a stray showed up at Lauren Wachter's house she quickly posted a picture of the animal online. "After that, it was kind of like a waiting game to see if somebody was going to contact us," Wachter said.
Within a few hours, possible matches were flooding in. One lead looked promising, so the owner came over.
"He looked at her face and he did start crying. It was really neat," she said.
"We could not believe it," Giron said. "Actually, I did cry. We cried when we saw her."
After three months of searching, Giron had gotten Xica back. Another closed case for Lost Dogs Arizona.
Goetz said her main message is that every stray on the street is most likely someone's lost pet. She hopes more people take the time to help reunite them,
"We tell people, 'don't give up because amazing things happen,'" Goetz said.
Since starting in 2013, Lost Dogs Arizona has reunited hundreds of pets with their owners. Some have been missing for 3 to 4 years or as little as a few hours.
Here's a link to online resources:
