A West Side Dognapping

But I was too intrigued by the announcement to let that get in the way, so I called the number, and luckily the missing dog's owner answered. She was an apparently emotionally healthy woman with a legitimate concern that her family pet had been nabbed. Here is what she told me.

At about 10 p.m. on July 10, a white Westie, or Highland terrier, was abducted from the 14th floor of the Sheffield, on W. 57th St. The dog was known as Sadie, and was 14 years old and blind. The dog's owner, Roberta Greenberg, was beside herself when she realized Sadie had gone missing.

"I had given her some treats at like 9:40, and then Sadie wandered away," Greenberg told me. "She was out in the hallway, but I wasn't worried. She's terrified of getting on the elevators because she's blind and can only see shadows. I started looking for her around 10, and she was nowhere on our floor. We leave our door open and our floor is like our neighborhood. Everyone hangs out and goes into each other's apartments. We set out and blanketed the building, checking every floor and asking the doorman if he had seen Sadie. No one saw a thing.

"As the search went on, it was like a surrealist nightmare. We had to check things like the garbage compactor. Soon we realized that Sadie was gone, and she could only have gotten out of the building if someone had abducted her. She only weighs 15 pounds, so you can stick her right in a bag. I've done it countless times."

I asked Greenberg if she or her family had any enemies who would be so depraved as to steal a little blind dog.

Greenberg hesitated, and would only say, "Detective Kevin Schroeder is handling the investigation, so you'll have to speak to him about that, but I do know that the cops think that Sadie was definitely abducted."

I put a few calls in to Schroeder, but kept missing his tour. Greenberg is very satisfied with the effort the Police Dept. has put into finding Sadie. I'd say that's as good an indicator as any I've come across that crime truly has gone down, at least in Manhattan. But the police drew a blank, and as the long days turned into weeks Greenberg and her family didn't just sit by calmly and wait for Sadie to turn up. They knew that without extreme effort on their part, Sadie would be a goner.

So Roberta Greenberg blanketed the Upper West Side with posters offering a thousand-dollar reward and laying out all the case's pertinent facts. When I first saw one and read the part about Sadie's being 14 and blind, it reminded me of the old Bronx joke about the blind three-legged dog named Lucky.

Greenberg has had a few leads; it turns out that Sadie might not have gone very far. A few days after her abduction a man spotted a dog fitting Sadie's description on Central Park W. and 61st St. Sadie was by herself, and just staring at a park wall. A few weeks later a local dogwalker also spotted a Westie fitting Sadie's description on Central Park S. being walked by an older woman. The dogwalker called out, "Sadie! Sadie! Sadie!" and the pooch seemed to respond, but the lady walking her got suspicious and picked the dog up and went away.

"Psychics who have worked with police and other agencies have contacted us and let us know that Sadie is being taken care of by someone in the 60s on the Upper West Side, who may not know that Sadie is being looked for," Greenberg said. "So we have hope. As a family, with my two kids, we decided to set aside one year trying to find Sadie. After that, well, at least we tried."

Greenberg sighed.

"You know, with all the cable channels in New York you'd think there would be one where you could post items that were lost and found. The only access we have to getting information out about Sadie is the Internet and faxing. I know that there are a lot of black market pro-dog people who try to help find the owners of dogs that are lost, but how do you get in touch with them all?

"Sadie was a special dog to my family and to a whole lot of other people. She was a gentle dog, and let children play with her. She helped one boy who had a fear of dogs get over that by being so gentle with the boy. Now when he asks me where is Sadie, what do I tell him?"