Woman recovers car and dog stolen by Swan Valley escapee

On Monday, Sue Van Luven took her 5-month-old Australian shepherd, Rosey, to work, as she always does.

But that was about where her typical day ended.

Rosey was stolen, along with Van Luven's vehicle, from the Swan Valley Youth Academy in Swan Lake. Van Luven is a teacher at the academy, which is a residential treatment center for boys ages 13 to 18. The facility, which uses a military model, is under contract to the federal Bureau of Prisons.

Rosey had been waiting in the car with food and water while Van Luven prepared her classroom for the day. She planned to go down and get the puppy later. But a teenager at the academy had other plans.

Van Luven said he and another boy stole her car key from her classroom and jumped out a second-story window to steal the car and escape.

"One of them chickened out and ran. The other one stole my car," Van Luven said.

The academy called police with a description of the boy and the car.

If she'd had a minute to talk to the 16-year-old thief, she would have said, "Take the car, honey. Give me the dog.

"They did find him on the highway," but backed off for safety reasons from a pursuit of the boy who was "going too fast," Van Luven said. Officers then lost sight of him.

Van Luven said she previously taught in California, where "if something gets lost, you find it," so she went looking for her car and her dog herself after work. With the help of a 68-year-old coworker, she found her car, damaged, outside of Bonner.

The escapee and Rosey were both gone.

Believing that the boy would have gone to Missoula, where he has friends and family, Van Luven took out an ad in a Missoula newspaper asking for Rosey's safe return.

She didn't think the boy would hurt the puppy, Van Luven said.

"He likes the dog," she said. But he stole her cell phone, too, and when she called her number Monday night, someone answered and she heard the sound of an intense party going on. She worried that in that environment, "No one will pay attention to that dog."

Rosey was recently spayed and Van Luven had planned to take her to the vet Monday to have her stitches removed.

"I'm very concerned," she said Tuesday afternoon.

Hours later, her concern was relieved.

Some children had seen the escapee dump the car. They watched him tie Rosey to a tree or a post. They went about their business, but when they came back and Rosey was still there, they took her home and called the Humane Society.

Van Luven and her daughter-in-law picked up the puppy Tuesday afternoon. She'd been playing with her rescuers' dog and was in fine shape.

It's a story with a happy ending.

"I love my dog," she said.