How can walking a dog rescue a life?

Since my boss's son went back to Thailand for vacation on May 26th I started to take his dog, Nin for a walk on campus. I do that when I get off of work at three in the afternoon. On wednesday my husband and I always walk Nina, his friend's dog, but now her owner is taking care of her old cat closely so she doesn't have time to take Nina to us. So we do Nin instead now. Poor Nina. :( Ok back to the story. On Thursday I usually walk Nin by myself on campus. And the rest of the week somebody else take her there. The first place we go is the eucalyptus grove. If you enter the campus from Oxford you'll walk pass a big lawn and then get to a road, cross the road and you'll see that grove I am talking about. This grove is always quiet, away from everthing else on campus. I feel isolated when I am there. There are strangers sometimes. Strangers here mean marginalized people. Nin loves it there because there are always some squirels to hunt. I always feel kind of nervous there because it's very quiet. There are hardly anybody walking by. People always walk on the other roads nearby. And if you are not literally in that grove you can't see what's going on inside because it's surrounded by trees and bushes and there is a stream along most of it. Sounds like a nice place to meditate, I guess.

On Thursday (June 10th) my boss and I went back there again with Nin, of course. My boss wanted to know where exactly it is that Nin likes to jump down the stream and drinks out of it becuase I always tell her how much Nin likes that part of the stream. There we were at the eucalyptus grove waiting for Nin to do her business. She likes to do it there, too. There was this black guy with his black dog. He started the conversation by asking us "Was it here that a student got robbed?" I said "Oh there was somebody gttingt robbed on campus? I didn't know that. " He said yes but he wasn't sure if it was there. We moved on to show my boss Nin's favorite stream farther up hill.

A day later, my boss took Nin for a walk by herself because I had to work. She came back about an hour later with a backpack and a wet dirty tennis ball. I asked why she took the backpack with her on this walk. She said she didn't take it she just found it in the eucalyptus grove covered with leaves next to a big log. I know exactly which one it is. She brought it with her because she found a camera, an Ipod, a cell phone and something else. The backpack looked like it was used recently beacuse there were some drinks and new letters inside. I checked the camera first cuz I like this stuff. There were some pictures and two of them I think are the ones of himself. My husband said I shouldn't tell people that I looked at the pictures in the camera. There are two pictures of himself. My husband said I shouldn't have looked without permission. The guy looks good. ;) I checked the cell phone to see if I can call somebody that can contact him. I called the person who sent him a message but it didn't work. I went to recent calls and the last number was named "mom". I called that number and nobody answered until they heard what was going on when I was leaving a meesage. His mom said her son has diabetes and he might have had low sugar problem and walked off. She also asked if we found his computer. At the moment I thought that sounded bazaar because if he had that problem how would he move away from the spot? Well she is the mom she should know better. So I said I was gonna call the police because we can't take care of that at the moment. The mother couldn't do anything because she lives in Arizona. We know where he lives by reading the address on the letters and it's only a few blocks away from the restaurant but we were all working. After I hang up my bosses said they would bring the backpack to the guy themself after work which is sometiimes 10.30 or 11.00 at night. I can't say anything about it, she found the thing and she is my boss.

About 20 minutes later his mom called us and she said his cousin would come pick it up. An hour later the cousin came. (Man, he is a handsome young man.) After making him verify himself I gave the backpack to him and called my boss to come say something. The cousin said they are worried about him so much because he has diabetes. The cousin already checked at his apartment but the manager there said they haven't seen him. The cousin asked if we found his computer. So appearantly he has a computer and he uses it a lot. My boss said please let us know if he is ok. He asked where we found it and if the leaves looked like somebody put them on the backpack to hide it. That was also my first question to my boss when she told me how she found it. She said she couldn't tell. He said thank you, took a business card and left. About fifteen to twenty minutes later, the mother called again. She asked where exactly did we find the backpack. Then she said her son likes it there a lot. He took her there once.

His mother called back gain 2 hours later. She said her son was now in the hospital. He was found in the creek cut and briused all over. I was so shocked. She was crying and thanking us for doing such a good thing. So we assumed that the guy was in the grove using his computer and got robbed there. I hope the next news we get from them is that he is doing very well just like nothing happened because we don't know how long time he was in the stream before he was rescued.

The lesson from this story for me is. If my boss was just a little greedy. If she just wanted that camera which cost only about 200 bucks and the Ipod and that cheap cell phone. If all that happened is she kept those for herself. We would have lost one life. And that would have been too cheap to be worth a life. Somebody might think it's just a cheap camera, and ipod and a free cell phone the owner won't feel so bad about losing them. I wouldn't. But who knows that only the cheap stuff can lead you to the point where you can save the owner's life.

And for me the whole story happened because of this sweet sweet dog. I wouldn't start walking her if she is not sweet enough that I can't stand seeing her getting bored behide the restaurant. And my boss and other people woudn't follow what I do. (before that my boss took Nin for a walk only around the block) . There you go. This is how walking a dog can rescue a life. Thank to sweet Nin and my sweet boss. :) Be very thoughtful before you do anything. I love this class. :)