The Hambone Chronicles - Updated
If you're like me, you've either received or read this on any number of Angeleno websites in the past few days:
ATTENTION ALL:Being a pit bull owner, this naturally caught my attention - as if we haven't had enough bad pit-news lately. However, I'm also a writer and a cynic, so I wanted to make sure this wasn't some kind of a hoax, say, by someone looking for the van's owners and using a heartfelt ploy to get it. I emailed the owner and hit the internets.My dog, HAMBONE, was stolen Monday evening (Feb 11th) from outside the 7-11 @ Cahuenga and Yucca in Hollywood.
He was taken by two men and put in a van that has been described as:
A Green work van (like an Astro van), with a crappy paint job. On the roof of the van is a light bar "W2" is painted on the driver's side.Hambone has a black body with a white head. One blue eye, and one brown. He is gentle and submissive.
This dog means the world to me, so please blast this email out to anyone/everyone you know. Any information regarding the van or the whereabouts of the dog is greatly appreciated.
Please call (310)990-8874, or email eric.leemon@gmail.com with any information.
-Eric
If Hambone is still missing, I'd be surprised, because this grassroots "HamberAlert" (sorry) is everywhere - from Defamer to MetrobloggingLA to MySpace to Craigslist (pets, community, and lost and found) to The Haphazard Gourmet Girls. All I did was Google "hambone dog stolen".
UPDATE: Good (and bad) news. Good news is, I've heard from Hambone's Dad. Bad news, he's still missing. Here's some more details:
It's the real deal Donna...
Hambone was stolen from me on Monday evening. He was tied up outside the 7-11 at the NE corner of Cahuenga and Yucca in Hollywood. According to the witnesses that saw it go down, one black male driving a late model, red Dodge Charger/Magnum untied my dog, a moment later, an army Green Van with "W2" painted on the side pulled up. The Driver of the van and the owner of the Dodge spoke for a moment before the van drove across the street. The owner of the Dodge then ran with my dog, Hambone, across the street, tossed him into the van, and the van sped away. The guy in the Dodge took off immediately thereafter.Can you help me? I've spread the word far and wide, and thousands of people are now involved (no exaggeration), but I'm not sure what my next steps should be. Any advice or thoughts would be so very much appreciated. My dog is a very important part of my life, and I need to know I'm doing everything that I can.
One more piece of information that I think is important in regards to Hambone. There is an LAPD surveilance camera at the SE corner of Cahuenga and Yucca... the cops haven't been able to reviewed the tapes from that intersection yet, but I have a feeling that the camera very well could have captured the incident.
Thank you,
eric@findhambone.com
Sadly, dognapping in LA is a fairly big business, and dognapping rings have been busted - usually when the owner shows up to collect the ransom. Many dogs are stolen from yards; a few expensive breeds have been stolen directly from the car they're waiting in while their owner runs an errand - fairly common in Beverly Hills.
photo of Hambone from the Hambone flyer.