Borchers took out ads, offered a $100 reward, and hired a Cincinnati pet-tracker - who charges around $600 for his services, not including travel time - to come to Oakwood and follow Nike’s trail. All, until Tuesday, for naught.
Then Jonathan Patterson, 27, of Kettering called. He found the turtle while driving on Far Hills Avenue on July 23. “I wanted to stop and help this turtle before it got ran over so we stopped traffic. Held everybody up, went and got the turtle,” Patterson said.
He contacted Borchers on Tuesday evening after an acquaintance told his stepmother about the lost turtle ad she saw in the Dayton Daily News. The stepmother then called Patterson.
“I’m an animal lover. Animal, people, life,” Patterson said of why he stopped for the turtle. “If somebody is in need I can’t really help but stop and do what I can.”
Borchers was already moving through the grieving process. “I was just starting to accept the fact that someone nice picked her up,” she said Tuesday. “I was hoping that a nice person either kept her as a pet or put her in a lake. I just can’t believe it. The chance of her making it back home, is unbelievable.”
When Patterson met Borchers at her house she called him a hero and told him he would receive a $100 reward. “I just did what anybody would do for a hurt creature. I took it in and helped it. I don’t know if that’s heroic, but I am glad I could be a hero for somebody,” Patterson said.
Samia Borchers husband, William, said his wife had not spoken to him for days because of the missing turtle.
“She’s thrilled to have her turtle back. I’m thrilled too for her,” William Borchers said.
“I’m surprised that (the turtle’s disappearance) upsets me as much as it did,” Borchers said prior Nike’s return. She admitted that some might find her actions to get Nike back as a waste of time, but they are mistaken. “You can think of a dog and a cat that way. I feel like I have always taken care of this turtle. I just feel like its not getting cared for right now.”
Borchers went so far as hiring Jim Berns of Pet Search and Rescue to help find Nike. “In five years, we’ve had no calls for turtles and in the last month, we’ve had two,” said Berns, a pet detective based in Cincinnati. He used a coon hound and then a blood hound to track Nike’s scent to Far Hills Avenue.
Nike was a gift from a family friend in Florida who drove the little turtle to Ohio 10 years ago. At the time, Borchers was seeking a turtle for her daughter after two previous ones had died.
Borchers even took the turtle on walks in the neighborhood, sometimes turning him sidewides so people would think she was a purse. She feared if she didn’t, they would stare.
When asked if hiring a pet detective to search for a turtle was going to the extreme, Berns said, “Love doesn’t make any sense. When you are attached to your pet, it becomes a member of your family…(My clients) are really really attached to their pets.”
Red-Earred Slider Turtles cost about $15. They are regulated by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and owners must pay $25 each year to renew their permit to possess once, since it is a native reptile, said Ron Ollis, ODNR’s Law Enforcement Program administrator.
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