WASHINGTON — Another dog was allegedly stolen in D.C. this past weekend.
Saturday night, Caroline Boyce says she tied her 7-year-old rescue Charlie - short for Charlotte - to a post outside the Giant Food at 3rd Street and H Street Northeast while she ducked into the grocery store not far from her apartment in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.
But when she and her boyfriend went back for Charlie, she was gone.
They called police and posted flyers, and by Sunday, Boyce says several tips were pointing to a woman in a nearby apartment building.
She says police went to the apartment, but no one answered; without a warrant, she says police told her they couldn't do much more at the time.
But later that night, around 10 p.m., Boyce says she got more calls from people at the apartment building, "That had reached out saying, 'You need to get here right now. This woman's here.'" Boyce said they told her.
With help from another resident in the apartment - and perhaps against her better judgment - Caroline and her boyfriend knocked on the woman's door themselves.
"I knew that it was a risk," Boyce said. "We were just begging, 'Please, please, please let us have our dog back. We can see her. We can see you," Boyce said she told the woman through the door after seeing Charlie's paws under it.
"And that went on for about an hour," Boyce said with no word from the woman in the apartment.
Monday morning, Boyce says they came back on two hours of sleep around 6 a.m. and waited in the lobby for more than two hours. Boyce says when the woman came out with Charlie and their dog came running.
"She, you know, kind of gave a laugh at us, turned around and went right back upstairs," Boyce said of the woman she says had her dog.
Now, with multiple incidents of stolen dogs in D.C., Boyce says she is looking over her shoulder more than she would like.
"A little bit of fear, I guess, that I'm going to run into this woman," she said.
But, what Boyce says she is feeling the most is "gratitude" for all the friends and strangers who helped her find Charlie and for more time with her dog.
"Getting that 30-minute walk in the morning with Charlie sometimes gets pushed to the backburner. And, I think this experience... I'm really excited to get out there and, you know, take my dog for a nice long walk and enjoy the beautiful city that we live in," Boyce said.
She says she hasn't decided if she will press charges. MPD tells WUSA9 the department is still working on the case. Boyce says police tell her they are reviewing security footage to see if cameras caught what happened.