Hollister man hailed as hero for reuniting dog with owner
This is a tale of dogged determination, featuring an anonymous
Good Samaritan from Hollister, a former NFL football player from
Salinas and a 90-year-old woman from Santa Cruz. Spoiler alert: it
has a happy ending
– though it’s not quite over, yet.
During the heavy rain and coastal flooding in late March, Thelma
Dalman
– a spry senior who lives alone with her poodle mix named
Buttons and some birds – was alerted by a neighbor that her patio
was flooding and that the water was running into her house.
She called the water department, who referred her to the sewer
department, who told her to call 911, which she did. When fire
crews arrived, they determined that Thelma, who had recently
undergone a heart procedure, required medical attention.
Hollister man hailed as hero for reuniting dog with owner
This is a tale of dogged determination, featuring an anonymous Good Samaritan from Hollister, a former NFL football player from Salinas and a 90-year-old woman from Santa Cruz. Spoiler alert: it has a happy ending – though it’s not quite over, yet.
During the heavy rain and coastal flooding in late March, Thelma Dalman – a spry senior who lives alone with her poodle mix named Buttons and some birds – was alerted by a neighbor that her patio was flooding and that the water was running into her house.
She called the water department, who referred her to the sewer department, who told her to call 911, which she did. When fire crews arrived, they determined that Thelma, who had recently undergone a heart procedure, required medical attention.
“Since I was being hauled off to a hospital as a result of this miserable experience,” Thelma said during a phone interview this week, her grandson Chris offered to watch Buttons at his Toro Park house on the Hwy. 68 corridor between Salinas and Monterey.
Chris Dalman, as local football fans know, played for Palma High School and Stanford University before playing seven years with the San Francisco 49ers – including a Super Bowl-winning campaign following the 1994 season. After a coaching stint at Stanford, Chris now is director of admissions for Palma and a member of the coaching staff at the school.
Knowing that his grandmother’s dog means the world to her, Chris offered to take Buttons in while Thelma and her house were recovering.
“I went in to see her, said ‘no worries, I’ve got your dog,’ and that set her mind at ease, which is what I was looking to do,” Chris said.
Sometime during the three hours that his wife, a substitute teacher, was working that afternoon, 12-year-old Buttons – who is blind and deaf – got out of their fenced yard, 150 yards from the busy two-lane highway.
When Chris realized the dog had escaped, he was “sick to my stomach,” he recalled. “I’d hope we’d find him; my grandmother means the world to me and the dog means the world to her.”
They searched the neighborhood for the missing dog, but had no luck. A few hours later, Chris got a call from his dad, Bill, saying that a truck driver from Hollister had returned Buttons to Thelma’s house in Santa Cruz.
“I was blown way that the guy was in Salinas and cared enough to return the dog to Santa Cruz,” Chris said.
Bill was at his mother’s house with an insurance adjuster when he heard a voice in the front yard calling out, “Thelma, Thelma.”
“Here was this young man holding my mother’s dog, which I knew was over in Salinas, and I wondered how the dog got here,” he said.
The man said he was a truck driver from Hollister who had been in the Toro Park area and saw a dog heading for the freeway. He picked it up, saw Thelma’s name on its tag, Googled her name and found her address, and drove all the way to Santa Cruz hoping to find her.
“He was very nice,” Bill said. “I should have gotten his name and number.”
Bill gave the man a reward and thanked him for his efforts.
Thelma, a nationally-recognized school nutrition pioneer during her tenure as director of food services at Santa Cruz City Schools, contacted The Pinnacle in the hopes of identifying the Samaritan so she can have an opportunity to thank him for returning Buttons. Chris Dalman said he hopes to meet the man – believed to be between his late 20s to mid-30s – “so I can shake his hand.”
As Thelma sat with Buttons on her lap this week, she reflected on the anonymous truck driver’s kind actions.
“This young man, with no thought except to get the dog back home, drove all the way here,” she said. “I thought this was a noble deed. I want to thank him personally. Buttons, he’s my life.”
Oddly, this is not the first long-distance dog reunion for Thelma. Half a century ago, she and her husband lost a dog during a trip to the Sierra and had it returned to them by a man from Soquel.
“This is twice in my 90 years that I’ve had a dog returned to me,” she said with a chuckle. “There are a lot of good people out here in this world. This dog’s tale has a nice ending.”
Bill recalls the mystery dog-returner mentioning that he owns five or six dogs and some horses and that his first name might be Chris.
Anyone who has information about the Good Samaritan can contact me at the newspaper so that the man can be put in touch with Thelma and the rest of the appreciative Dalman family.
Adam Breen teaches newspaper and yearbook classes at San Benito High School and is a reporter for The Pinnacle. He is former editor of the Free Lance. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected] or by phone at 637-6300, ext. 330.
