WICHITA, Kan. — Nicolle Leon left for work one morning in 2015. When she returned to her Wichita home later that day, the family’s dog, a beagle named Roscoe, was gone.
“He went missing,” Leon said. “We looked everywhere for him.”
Roscoe was a year old when he went missing. The family searched for him, with Leon calling the shelter daily for months. She didn’t understand how he could have gotten out of the fenced yard.
“There was no sign of the gate being open, you know, and no holes that were dug up,” Leon said.
For the next eight years, the family went on without knowing what had happened to their beloved dog.
Then Leon got a phone call just before midnight on Jan. 11.
She was out of town on a work trip in Texas and woke up to news that Roscoe had been found, 1400 miles away.
“They said hey, ‘We found your dog, ‘ “ Leon said. “My first thought was that one of my dogs that I have now had gotten out.”
Leon did not recognize the address the person had given her. The caller later said the address was in Caldwell, Idaho, which is roughly about 1,400 miles away from Wichita.
Leon dismissed the idea that the dog was hers until she asked for a description.
“She says it’s a beagle and I immediately jumped up,” Leon said. “Are you kidding me?”
Roscoe had been found on a street in Caldwell, Idaho by a woman who turned him in to the West Valley Humane Society. Two other women, Shae DeBerry and Katherine Miller, got involved in getting Roscoe home, Leon told an Eagle reporter.
Miller, a member of the lost and found pets of Caldwell, Idaho Facebook group, had just bought a microchip scanner and scanned Roscoe’s chip.
“This dog has been missing for 6-7 years,” Miller said on the group’s Facebook page.
Days later and after getting in contact with Leon, DeBerry arranged for Roscoe to finally go home.
“Friday, Jan. 13th I loaded little Roscoe into a transport van for his big send off to his family,” DeBerry said in a post about Roscoe in the Facebook group.
Roscoe arrived in Wichita the morning of Jan. 15.
“I wondered, ‘like, is he going to recognize us?’ “ Leon said. “When he got out of that transport van, he was so excited and wagging his tail. He jumped all over my kids.”
Although she is happy to have the now 9-year-old Roscoe back home, Leon is curious about where he was all those years.
“My first reaction was if there was an owner who was taking care of him all this time,” Leon said. “It’s sad because we missed out on eight years with him.”
Leon’s kids, Alani and and Alex, were young when Roscoe went missing. They now are 17 and 14. Roscoe joined a family of two other dogs at his old home.
“They [kids] are so happy to have him back.” Leon said. “It feels good to have him and take care of him for the rest of his life.”
