Covid Nurse’s Lost Dog Found After Seven-Day Odyssey Thanks to ‘Type-A’ New Yorkers

By Carol Tannenhauser

Last Sunday, WSR posted a story about a dog named Indie who had been missing from the Upper West Side for five days. Heather Angus, a 42-year-old nurse anesthetist at Mt. Sinai Hospital, had adopted her three months before, from an organization called Zani’s Furry Friends, run by Michael Ripinsky, who rescues dogs from all over the world.

Indie was a street dog from India. Heather saw her on Petfinder and was stunned by her resemblance to her previous dog of 19 years, who died this February. “I was so sad at the time,” Heather said. “When I met Indie, after about 20 minutes of her being afraid, she came over and leaned against me and licked my hand. I was like, okay, I think we’re a match.”

Indie comforted Heather in other ways as well. “I’m a nurse anesthetist at Mount Sinai Hospital,” she said. “I was on the rapid response team during the pandemic. We took care of the sickest of the sick. We were sent around the hospital to respond to people needing intubation. It was crazy. I was an ER nurse for eight years and a Burn ICU nurse for two years, so I have seen trauma and death. But I had never seen anything like that in my entire life. ”

On the evening of Tuesday, June 8th, while Heather was at work, Indie jumped at the sudden flight of a pigeon, and her leash flew out of the hand of her dog walker on West 78th Street and West End Avenue. Indie took off, heading south. “When the walker called me and told me she had bolted, I immediately made a posting and a flyer on PawBoost, which helps you find lost animals. Someone called right away and said, ‘I just saw your dog.’”

Tips kept coming in Tuesday night. “Indie ran into Riverside Park…to 72nd and Broadway…down to 67th Street…to 36th! Then, we got a tip saying a dog had run through the Queens Midtown tunnel at 8 PM,” Heather said. “A half hour later, someone saw it running down 30th Street in Hunter’s Point. I thought, ‘You made it all the way to Long Island City!’”

Six days passed. “It was six days straight of posting flyers and following up tips,” Heather said. “The community got so involved — the Upper West Side and Queens. It was bigger than me at a certain point. People were emailing, saying ‘I’m working on the press.’ ‘I’m taking care of Instagram.’ ‘I’m calling the shelters.’ CBS News and the New York Post interviewed me.”

Heather believes it was a typical New York response. “The day when someone pushes you out of the subway door, you’re like, ‘Why am I here? This is so stupid. I should live somewhere else,’” she explained, laughing. “Then, when you meet all these amazing people, you’re like, I can never live anywhere else! We’re all Type A personalities running around helping each other when things get bad.”

On Tuesday morning, June 15th, a week after Indie had been lost, Jairo Naranjo walked into the warehouse where he works in Long Island City, heard rustling, and saw a dog huddled on a shelf in the corner. He tried to coax it out, then to feed it, but it would not move.

“I left for lunch and walked to the corner diner,” Jairo recalls, ”and taped to the door was a flyer that said ‘Missing,’ with a picture of the dog and a phone number. I called the number.”

Watch Heather and Indie’s reunion below.

“Indie is doing well,” Heather reported. “I took her to the vet immediately. She was covered in black tar and scrapes, dehydrated, but only lost one pound. I think the warehouse had a cat and she ate its food and drank its water. She came home and ran circles around the apartment and found her favorite tennis balls.”

This Saturday, in Central Park, there will be another Indie reunion. Heather has invited all of the people who helped find her — and anyone else who wants to come — to celebrate this brave dog and each other. Michael Ripinsky, from Zani’s Furry Friends, will be there with some dogs for adoption. The place is the Arthur Ross Pinetum, which you can reach from the West 86th Street entrance to the park. The time is 10 AM to 6 PM.

“This story is a miracle, only possible because of the angels involved,” Heather said. “I’d love to connect so many amazing people. Bring your furry friends and let’s celebrate!”