French bulldog missing from San Lorenzo found in Mexico
A man who said he bought the dog from a Tijuana street vendor returned him to the family
Call it luck or credit social media, but a man came across a dog on a Mexican street and helped bring it hundreds of miles back to its East Bay home.
Benjamin Gonzalez was mingling among street vendors in Tijuana when he saw Brody, a 4-year-old French bulldog, in a cage. Near the dog were trinkets and other odds and ends for sale.
It was an unusual scene, admits Gonzalez, who was deported after spending 14 years in California and Arizona prisons after he was convicted of killing a man in Oakland.
“I said, ‘What do you want for it?’ The guy said, ‘$2,000,’ ” Gonzalez said. “That’s a lot of money. I had to think about it.
I called my friend and asked him if we could use the dog for breeding. He said, ‘Yeah.’ So I went ahead and bought it.”
Gonzalez bought the canine for $1,000 after wheeling and dealing with the seller.
“That’s a lot of money for me,” he said.
And that’s where this story might have ended.
Except Gonzalez’s family lives in the East Bay and someone noticed on Facebook another family’s plea to locate a dog that had wandered off in San Lorenzo named Brody.
Gonzalez told his family about the dog he had bought. He had named it Chapo.
“My brother said, ‘It looks like the dog that’s missing from here,’ ” Gonzalez said in a call from Tijuana. “I said, ‘There’s no way.’ ”
Brody was bred in Mexico, and the dog’s owner, Debbie Campbell, said during a phone interview that the animal was tattooed, which helps identify it, a typical practice in Mexico.
Some online exchanges quickly established the dog Gonzalez bought on the Tijuana street was indeed Brody, which the San Lorenzo family was missing.
Just how it ended up in Mexico hundreds of miles from Campbell’s home remains a mystery.
The pet vanished Feb. 3. Its owners got it back Saturday night.
“Within 10 or 15 minutes, we could not locate him,” Campbell said about when Brody wandered off, adding that the family and friends quickly began an all-out effort to find the dog, including posting photos online. “He was gone.”
Campbell thought she never would see Brody again.
Soon afterward, Gonzalez learned about the missing dog while contacting his family in the United States online. He then made arrangements to get the animal home.
“He said, ‘I think I have your dog,’ ” Campbell said about Gonzalez. “I was gasping for breath. I said, ‘Can we have him?’ And he said, ‘Of course. Come and get him.’ ”
Campbell’s son traveled to San Diego to pick up Brody, which Gonzalez’s girlfriend brought across the border back into the United States.
The family paid Gonzalez $1,000 as a reward, the amount he paid for Brody in Tijuana.
“I never asked for any money,” Gonzalez said. “The family was very kind to me.”
Gonzalez spent 14 years in prison after he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter when he was 20 years old.
He was released from custody in January 2019 and deported from the United States.
Since then, he has not returned to this country.
Watching videos of the 64-year-old Campbell and Brody get reunited touched him, Gonzalez said. The dog was despondent in Mexico.
“When the dog was with me, it was not happy.
Something was wrong,” he said. “Then I saw the videos when it got back to the Bay Area. Now I know it’s home.”
Campbell said Brody’s name is a play on “little brother.” She has owned the dog since it was a puppy.
“He’s my bro,” Campbell said. “He’s my little buddy.”