A dog named Mercy finds girl who was lost in the woods during the worst of Elsa’s rains
The plot almost sounds like one of those ‘80s horror hits: The woods on a stormy night. A girl lost. A major threat imperils her survival.
In this case, the threat was severe weather whipped up by Tropical Storm Elsa in Southwest Florida. The 12-year-old girl was out there and reported as missing. She was considered “endangered,” according to deputies from the Lee County Sheriff’s Office, tasked with finding her.
On Tuesday night, deputies enlisted one of Sheriff Carmine Marceno’s most skilled officers: a member of the county’s ReUnite Program, a bloodhound named Mercy.
“Despite severe weather from Tropical Storm Elsa, Mercy tracked the little girl for more than half a mile through thick woods. Thankfully, Mercy found her and brought her safely back home to her family,” the sheriff’s office posted on Facebook Wednesday.
Donated by Jimmy Ryce Center
Mercy graduated from training school with her partner, Sgt. Rich Castellon, in July 2020, according to the News-Press in Fort Myers.
Mercy was donated to the sheriff’s department by the Jimmy Ryce Center in Naples, which has donated more than 700 bloodhounds to law enforcement agencies nationwide to help in the rescue of missing children, said spokeswoman Terri Lynn.
For example, in May 2019, the Jimmy Ryce Center, a nonprofit organization that works to raise awareness of child sexual predators, donated Claudine, a 3-month-old bloodhound, to the Miami Police Department’s Special Victims Unit. Claudine was named after the late mother of Jimmy Ryce, the 9-year-old Redland child who was abducted, raped and murdered in 1995.
The day Jimmy Ryce disappeared, and the quest to find him and bring a killer to justice
Social media reaction
The Facebook post about how Mercy found the lost Lee County girl generated heaps of praise for the four-legged hero with long floppy ears.
“What a good girl. She deserves a big steak,” one reader posted — most likely referring to Mercy, though the unnamed 12-year-old girl probably welcomed a meal after her soggy ordeal once she returned home. The sheriff’s department did not give out the girl’s name or the family’s.
“Props to the handler for deploying in that weather,” read another comment in the Facebook thread.
Elsa’s landfall in Florida
Tropical Storm Elsa made landfall Wednesday morning in the Cedar Key area of Florida with 65 mph sustained winds, according to the National Hurricane Center.
“It is absolutely getting crazy here, I mean crazy, pouring down cats and dogs,” Cedar Key resident JoAnn Wonsik said in an email to the Miami Herald Wednesday morning. “I can’t even see the swamp from my kitchen window and the water is already creeping up on my property about six feet from the swamp. It’s really dumping large amounts of rain here.”
The remnants of Elsa passed over Middle Georgia Wednesday. On Thursday morning, Tropical Storm Elsa was dumping “torrential rains” over the Carolinas, about 45 miles west of Florence, South Carolina. Sustained winds were at 45 mph and Elsa was heading northeastward, according to the National Hurricane Center’s 8 a.m. advisory.
