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HOPKINS PARK – It was 2019 when EF Ellington’s dog was stolen from a yard while he was living in Kansas City, Missouri. He pretty much had given up on getting her back.
In early March, Ellington of Hopkins Park, was shopping at Berkot’s in Momence when his mom called him and told him they found Mz. CC, his English Staffordshire service dog.
“I’m going, ‘That was six years ago,’ ” he said to the checkout clerk, Linda, who heard the conversation. “She said, ‘Do you need a minute Mr. Ellington?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I do.’ ”
Ellington was amazed by what his Mom, who lives in Chicago, was telling him, and he gathered himself and told his Mom he’d call her back when he got to the car. He called her back, and she gave him the contact information for the detective who was tracking down Mz. CC.
“She was 6 then, and now she’s 12,” he said. “She’s 84 [in human years]. … I’m still in a daze.”
It’s a remarkable story of the journey CC took from being away from her master and then being reunited because of the help from some dedicated, kind people who reached out to find the rightful owner. Ellington was reunited with CC a month ago.
“I said, ‘She’s home,’ ” Ellington said. “She won’t let me go anywhere without her. If I’m in the house … and I go to put some shoes or something on, she’s right there behind me.”
Back in February of 2019, Ellington let Mz. CC out in the yard of his aunt’s house for a while. He helped care for his aunt.
“Somebody came by and lured her away,” Ellington said.
He often took his dog to his aunt’s house and let her out in the yard as normal.
“But this time she was out a little bit longer,” he said. “She’s normally on the deck. So I went and looked, and I called her. I thought I saw her going around the corner, but I couldn’t see anybody else with her, because my aunt lived on a corner lot.
Mz. CC vanished.
Ellington did everything he could to find CC. Days, months and then years passed.
Then one day CC wandered up onto the porch at a home in Elgin, Oklahoma, about 70 miles southwest of Oklahoma City, near Lawton. The woman’s house was near a school, and Ellington said CC likes kids, so she probably went with some kids to the school, got tired and took a nap on the porch.
CC was then picked up by the Elgin Animal Shelter where Alexis Crow, an animal control officer, scanned for a pet microchip.
“Thankfully it had one. That’s always a good thing,” Crow said in a story by KSWO TV station in Lawton. “Unfortunately, the phone number was out of date.”
The shelter put ads in the newspaper, put up flyers in the park but no one claimed CC.
“I told [Crow], I said, ‘Well, they stole her,’ ” Ellington said. “They knew that if she had a chip, they couldn’t go pick her up.”
Although the phone number was out of date for the microchip, the shelter did know CC was registered in Kansas City. It was there through a Facebook group for lost and found pets that Glenn Golden started the process to bring CC home. Golden, known as the “Chip Detective” according to the KSWO story, started making some calls to Ellington’s relatives and finally reached EF’s mom in Chicago.
Ellington, 57, had not only moved in 2021, but he changed his phone number, too.
“[Golden] contacted my mom through Facebook and got her number,” he said.
The rest is history.
The Elgin Animal Shelter drove the dog 850 miles to Ellington’s home in Hopkins Park on April 2 to finally bring her home.
Ellington never forgot about CC. When he talked to the shelter, they let him speak to CC through the phone and she recognized his voice right away.
“And she still does everything,” Ellington said of his beloved CC. “She sits up, she shakes paws, she high fives.”
Ellington got CC in 2014 for $2,200 after all the registrations and shots. CC even saved his life in 2017, when she woke him up in the middle of the night. There was an electrical fire in the apartment building he was living in, and the room was starting to fill up with smoke.
Ellington awoke and pulled the fire alarm, alerting all the residents of the 40-unit apartment building. Everyone got out safely.
He’s realizing getting CC back after six years is an almost unbelievable story.
“I was shocked,” he said. “Dogs remember people. I said this is a ‘Lassie’ story, but Lassie found her way home. She was a collie; she always found her way home when she got lost.”
Kankakee County Animal Control hosting chip clinics
In the event a pet is lost, microchips can help reunite them with their owners.
Kankakee County Animal Control is hosting monthly microchip clinics from 3-4:30 p.m. every third Thursday of the month.
To make an appointment, call its office at 815-937-2949.
The cost is $15 for dogs or cats, and it can be paid for with cash or credit at the office at 134 Mooney Drive, Bourbonnais.
Dogs must be on a leash, and cats must be in a carrier.
Animal Control is also hosting off-site clinics in downtown Kankakee from 8 a.m. to noon on Aug. 2 and Sept. 6 at the Kankakee Farmer’s Market. Cash only at these events.