By Mark Price
Miami Herald
OKALOOSA COUNTY, Fla. — A missing person’s case in the Florida Panhandle came to a surprisingly heartwarming end when a dog got the attention of a passing patrol car and led a deputy directly to a missing 86-year-old woman.
Video of the incident was posted Oct. 6 by the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office, which reports the woman was injured and unable to make her way back home in the dark.
“Sometimes heroes come with four legs and a wagging tail!” the sheriff’s office wrote in its post.
“The initial call came from a distraught husband concerned about his missing wife. When a local senior citizen took a tumble and injured herself while walking her son’s dog one night recently (in the Destin area), it was a faithful four-legged friend who brought an OCSO deputy to her location.”
It happened around 10:30 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 25, the sheriff’s office told McClatchy News in an email.
Video shows Deputy Devon Miller was searching nearby residential streets when a dog came directly to the patrol car. The deputy stopped, and instinctually asked the dog: “Hi, baby, where’s your mama? Show me.”
The dog reacted by leading the deputy through a front yard, beside a home and onto a golf course, where the missing woman was found lying on the sidewalk “alert and conscious.”
Paramedics were summoned, and the woman was taken to a medical facility for evaluation, officials said.
As the deputy waited for EMS, she explained to the woman that the family’s dog led to her rescue. The dog’s name is Eeyore, like the stuffed donkey in “Winnie-the-Pooh,” officials said.
“I’m not even his owner. I’m his grandmother,” the woman says in the video. “He wouldn’t leave. He kept coming back to me. ... You’re a good boy! Grandma loves you.”
The video had 54,000 reactions on social media as of Oct. 7, including comments from many who said they were brought to tears.
“Dogs really (are) our guardian angels sent down to us,” one commenter wrote on Facebook.
Deputy Miller joined the sheriff’s office in August 2023, officials said.
Destin is about a 50-mile drive east from Pensacola.
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