Van full of dogs stolen in Oregon, doggy daycare says. Employees raced to find them

Sunni Liston stepped out of her van for not even a minute when she saw the interior lights click on signaling someone had started the engine.

The driver was taking her car and the dozen dogs that were inside, reports said.

As the owner of Coopers Dogpatch doggy daycare service, Liston was doing something she had done for nearly 20 years, KOIN reported. Every day, Liston would return dogs to their owners in downtown Portland after they spent the day with her in Clackamas County, according to The Oregonian.

“I parallel park on the street and people come to me and get their dogs,” Liston told KOIN. “So I sit in my van for about an hour and as each person comes, I unload the dog.”

On Tuesday, Liston left the van to get a client’s dog from the back and give it to its owner. Within seconds, a man entered the front seat and started the ignition, The Washington Post reported.

The driver took off with a dozen dogs inside, including Liston’s own dog named Howard, according to the Post.

“It took a split second to realize what had happened, and I screamed,” Liston told KOIN. “I came up to the side of the van, the driver’s side, and I was pounding — I was trying to get to the door. I was pounding the wall of the van, and he ran over my foot.”

Liston panicked. Her purse and cell phone were also inside the van, and she had no way to call for help, The Oregonian reported.

“I’ve been skydiving before when my parachute failed and I had to use the reserve,” she told The Oregonian. “I’ve always stayed calm, but this time I panicked.”

A bystander handed Liston a phone to call police, and then she called two of her employees, according to The Washington Post. They launched their own search and tracked Liston’s iPhone to locate the van, the news outlet reported.

They found the van in a parking lot that Liston said wasn’t visible from the street, according to KOIN. A friend who lived nearby blocked the van from exiting and flagged police down, The Oregonian reported.

A spokesman for the Portland Police Bureau told The Oregonian police received a report about what happened, but the situation was resolved before officers arrived.

The dognapper fled with Liston’s purse, but all the dogs were safe in the van, the newspaper reported.

Liston told The Washington Post she plans to buy GPS trackers for her vans and will now carry her keys with her when she leaves the van.