Luke Found Far From Home : Why, Oh Why, Oh Whyo, Why Did He Go to Ohio?

When the animal control officer telephoned Sherry Lomeli at her Westminster home, he just wanted to know one thing: “Can you figure out why we have your dog?”

Lomeli said: “Yeah. Because he ran away.”

“To Ohio?” the dogcatcher asked.

Doggone, if it wasn’t hard to believe, but the Lomeli family’s long lost Luke, part Labrador retriever, part boxer and part enigma, had somehow traveled from Westminster, Calif., to a suburb of Toledo, Ohio, 2,300 miles away--and in just 10 days.

“The dog is in super condition,” Maumee, Ohio, Animal Control Officer Rob Bunce said Friday. “It doesn’t look like it ran cross-country. It wasn’t muddy or anything and there was a big storm between here and California.”

The Lomelis thought their pooch had wandered off in search of a female Irish setter.

“I can’t believe it, it’s amazing, just like a little TV story,” said Lomeli, a bartender, who has searched her neighborhood and checked the county dog pound daily hoping to find the brown-and-white mixed breed. “A lot of my friends don’t even believe me.”

“I thought maybe Luke grew wings or something or hitched a ride with some truck driver,” she said.

Luke, who has been housed at the Toledo, Ohio, humane society, will arrive at Los Angeles International Airport today as air cargo, an all-expense-paid journey made possible by an anonymous donor, Lomeli said.

“It was going to cost us like $300 and my son and I were thinking where we would get the money,” she said. “These people have been so good to us.”

Her dog, which also answers to Cool Hand Luke, had wandered away on St. Patrick’s Day. On Monday morning, Maumee police were alerted that a large dog had startled a small child and that a concerned parent had confined the fugitive canine to his backyard.

Animal Control Officer Bunce was called in, checked the dog’s license and ultimately contacted Lomeli by telephone.

“We first thought it (belonged to) someone who moved here . . . ,” Bunce said. “It could have ridden a boxcar for all I know.”

“The dog is super friendly, the nicest dog you could ever see,” said Bunce, who speculated that Luke may have been stolen and transported to Ohio. “But you can tell it’s a mixed breed, so . . . it isn’t going to be worth a fortune.”

Tale May Never Be Known

Unless a conscience-stricken dog-naper calls to confess, Luke’s tale may never be known, Bunce allowed. “I don’t think anybody is going to admit carrying a dog across the country.”

Sighed Lomeli: “I wish I could teach Luke to talk.”

In Maumee, a bedroom community of about 18,000 population, Luke’s arrival “definitely stirred things up for us,” Bunce said. The town has “no extravagant amount” of fire hydrants, although “I’d say we have our share” of cats, he said.

“But I don’t know if that brings dogs in from across the country.”

Bunce said nothing this exciting has happened to him since he was squirted by a skunk last week. The farthest any of the other 50 dogs he has captured had traveled was about five miles, Bunce said.

Not only will Lomeli and her 20-year-old son David Elliston, the dog’s actual owner, be glad to welcome Luke home, but so will Timber, the family’s other dog.

Timber, part husky, part timber wolf, hasn’t been eating at all well since Luke left, Lomeli said.

“Our timber wolf was just mortified,” she said.