MAGNA — For Unified Police Sgt. Jodie Sampson, a parking lot makes a perfect office as she completes paperwork and waits for calls.
But last Friday morning a call found her, and it was the beginning of an interesting adventure.
While she was parked in a parking lot, a man walked up to Sampson's patrol car. "He said, 'Excuse me, but I found this dog and I need to catch a bus over here, can you take him?'" Sampson said.
It was a pit bull on a makeshift leash, with no collar or tags.
"In 20 years I've never had somebody hand me a dog on a shoelace," the sergeant said.
Sampson noticed that the dog was shaking and she looked for a place to keep it safe and warm while waiting for animal control officers to pick it up. She called a fellow officer with a cage in the back of his patrol car for assistance.
"I got out of the car and immediately started saying, 'Good dog, good dog,' trying to assess whether or not he was going to be aggressive," said officer Dustin Olzack. "He started wagging his tail and ran right up to me. I thought, 'OK, well either he's going to bite me, or he's going to like me.'"
But to this dog, everyone is a friend.
"He had the window down," said Olzack. "He was living the dream."
But before animal control arrived, the two Unified police officers were called to respond to a report of a man with a gun at a nearby park.
"We kind of looked at each other and said, 'What do we do?'" Sampson recalled. "I said, 'We take him with us.'"
When they arrived at the park, the call turned out to be nothing. Animal control officers arrived and picked up the dog. Just a few minutes later, another call came in. This time it was a call of a possible dog theft.
"In fact, over the radio I said, 'Let me know if it's a pit bull,'" Sampson said.
The pit bull's name was Cooper, and his owner was frantic. She had let him out in the morning to relieve himself and he bolted — something he had never done before.
Cooper is no ordinary dog. His true owner is a little girl with special needs.
"My daughter was having separation anxiety really bad when she was younger," said Morgan Spratt. "He was more to calm her down."
The family adopted him in 2011 when Cooper was 4 months old.
By the time police confirmed with Spratt that the dog they found was Cooper, he had already been processed at the animal shelter.
The dog had an AVID microchip, but because the family had recently moved, the information hadn't been updated with the company.
"I felt bad we had taken him down there," Sampson said of the shelter.
Especially when they learned the dog's owner couldn't pay the fee to get him out. So the officers pooled their cash to help spring Cooper. And with a little left over, they bought him a new collar and tag so Cooper will always be able to find his way home.
"So much has happened in the last year, to have this generosity is amazing," Spratt said getting emotional. "It's definitely restored my faith in people and definitely the police force."
Contributing: Viviane Vo-Duc
Email: akewish@deseretnews.com