Im-paws-ible return

Jeff Immediato and his dog Bobbi share a big hug on their lawn. It’s a sunny day in Corona del Mar, Bobbi’s bronze fur glistening in the light as she wraps her paws around her owner. She hardly leaves his side as he sits out front, much like his father did before he died.

It’s hard to imagine that eight months ago Bobbi disappeared, stolen from Immediato’s backyard. It took six months before Immediato and his family found out where Bobbi was — shockingly, miles away in Oregon.

It’s an amazing feat that Bobbi ever found her way home. She was missing eight months, six without a clue where she could be. But Immediato never let that hankering feeling his dog wasn’t just lost slip from his mind. He credits the fact she is home now to one simple mantra:

“I never gave up,” Immediato said. “I simply never gave up.”

Persistence isn’t a strong enough word to describe Immediato’s efforts.

His dog was stolen in November after she was chained outside, sitting in Immediato’s golf cart — a spot Bobbi enjoyed. Immediato has a camera watching his backyard, but the cart was parked out of sight that day.

From there starts a tale of spirit, mystery and a long-awaited homecoming.

“This dog means a lot to me,” said Immediato, a single father who takes care of his elderly mother.

Immediato’s quest to find his dog began where any person’s would: by making tons of posters. But the regular 8 ½ -by-11 posters weren’t enough for Immediato. He went larger, plastering color posters around his neighborhood in Corona del Mar.

“I knew my dog wasn’t lost,” he said. “I had to do something extraordinary.”

He garnered a lot of support over time, as months passed and the posters kept coming. Immediato changed pictures, wrote short stories about his dog and after spending thousands of dollars at Kinko’s, he eventually bought his own poster maker so that he could save money and start a mini-Bobbi-poster- manufacturing operation.

He rallied support from neighbors and local businesses. Volunteers started putting up posters at local shops, pet stores and veterinarian offices. Word got around — including some important conversations that got back to Immediato.

“I got a phone call that said, ‘The person who took your dog lives close to you,’ and then click,” Immediato said.

Immediato, armed with the knowledge someone had stolen his beloved pet, and with an idea of it being one of his neighbors, changed his campaign. Posters now asked for the culprits to come clean, to return his dog and no charges would be filed.

“I will not give up, and I will go anywhere and do everything to get my dog back,” one poster read.

Eventually police and animal control got wind of his story. Animal control officer Valerie Schomburg, who had known Immediato from before, asked him to make a statement to police. Once they had some information and made some calls, Newport Beach Police got a lead. They matched a license plate number — with the help of Schomburg cruising the neighborhood — and tracked it to Oregon. Newport Beach Police made a phone call up to Oregon where officers checked the property and found Bobbi. She had been living there for six months.

“It worked perfectly,” Schomburg said. “I think the person who did it didn’t know we have friends other places and can make a phone call.”

The dog was then given a first-class ticket back home. Bobbi flew Alaskan Airlines into Ontario Airport, an extra effort Immediato took to avoid anyone seeing his emotions flow.

“Of course I broke down,” Immediato said.

After enjoying some time with Bobbi, he took her to see his mother, who has been hospitalized after taking a serious fall that broke her hip.

“She cried,” Immediato said of his mother, Marge. “I have never seen my mom cry before in my whole life.”

Immediato had been taking care of his parents through the entire ordeal. Both were stricken with cancer in recent years, and Immediato’s father, Len, died a few weeks before Bobbi came home. Some of his last words were about the family pet. As for his mother, she is coming home from the hospital Tuesday — something for which Immediato credits Bobbi.

“My mom has gotten better every single day she has seen this dog,” he said.

Schomburg said she has never heard of something like this happening before. Sometimes people’s pets are taken for long periods of time by other family members, but to have a pet stolen, taken out of state and somehow found and returned was unbelievable.

“I was thrilled,” she said. “He is a great dog owner.”

Schomburg suspects the perpetrators didn’t have a malicious intent, but suspected Immediato was mistreating the dog because he chained Bobbi up in the backyard. But Schomburg said Immediato is good to Bobbi and that even the supposed good intentions were against the law.

The names of the culprits are unknown to Immediato, but he plans to press charges if given the opportunity.

But with his dog back, some of his anger has cooled. Mostly he is thankful — for his dog, for persons like Schomburg and detective Scott Smith, the Oregon police that found Bobbi and Immediato’s daughter, Madison, 19, who stood by his side and helped make posters throughout.

“People here love their dogs,” Immediato said.

THE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY

Nov. 11, 2007: Bobbi, half boxer and half Rhodesian ridgeback, is stolen from the backyard of Jeff Immediato. Immediato had posters up within hours asking for information about his missing dog.

January: After spending thousands in posters, Immediato buys a poster maker to speed up the process and save money.

May: A friend of Immediato’s, a dog walker, tells him she overheard a conversation about how two people knew someone who had “saved” a dog by unclipping it from a golf cart and taking it.

July: Bobbi is found in Oregon by police. Five days later she is flown home to be reacquainted with Immediato.

DANIEL TEDFORD may be reached at (714) 966-4632 or at daniel.tedford@latimes.com.