By GWEN FLORIO of the Missoulian | Posted: Monday, October 10, 2011 9:30 pm
A Missoula couple whose luck lately has been nothing but bad - car ripped off, then set afire; beloved dogs missing - finally emerged on the other side of the equation Monday with the return of Jill and Candy.
"We're very happy there's good people out there like the ones who found them, instead of the bad people who burned our vehicle," said Luke Kasun.
Kasun, 40, a union boilermaker, and his wife, Amanda, 34, like to run their dogs off Deer Creek Road near the Deer Creek Shooting Range. But last Wednesday, the dogs - a black, brown and white treeing walker named Jill, and a black, white and tan hound named Candy - kept running.
Without the telemetry collars the dogs usually wear, there was no way to call them back, Kasun said.
So the couple left their Chevy Blazer parked beside the road near the spot where they'd last seen the dogs, in hopes that Jill and Candy would return. Amanda Kasun said that every time she closes her eyes now, she recalls what greeted the couple when they returned Friday morning to check the car.
"All I can see is turning that corner and seeing our vehicle in flames," she said. "It was mind-blowing that someone would do that."
The couple also saw a green sport-utility vehicle leaving the area. Missoula County sheriff's deputies later stopped a green SUV on Deer Creek Road. A tent, boots and reloading equipment that had been in the Kasuns' Blazer were found in the SUV, said Sheriff's Detective Jason Johnson.
Its two occupants, Antonio Robinson, 28, and Chelsea Chafee, 25, are to appear Tuesday in Missoula County Justice Court on charges of theft, criminal mischief and felony arson.
Shortly after Robinson and Chafee were arrested, Johnson put out a plea:
The Kasuns, he said, "are upset over today's incident but more than anything they want to recover their dogs."
But the Kasuns also needed a replacement car. Over the weekend, they drove to Lewiston, Idaho, where a friend had a vehicle they could use. While they were gone, an army of friends organized by Luke's friend Patrick Jensen combed the woods unsuccessfully for the dogs.
On Sunday night, the Kasuns got as far as a camping trailer they keep in the Lochsa. They stayed there, out of cell range, glad about their replacement vehicle but still grieving over their dogs.
Luke, in fact, was so discouraged he began talking about selling the dog box the couple uses to tow their dogs behind a snowmobile. His wife urged him not to give up. "I always find things in weird, weird ways," she reminded him. "Something good is going to happen."
The couple was still asleep when logger Cliff Reed of the Bitterroot Valley went into the woods off Deer Creek Road at 4:30 Monday morning to load wood he'd cut earlier.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something move beneath the log deck. "It was two dogs. Basically, one went to running. I just stopped the machine and got out and yelled. It hesitated for a minute or two and then it came over and the other one came out from under the deck."
He called Pruyn Veterinary Hospital, whose number was on the dogs' vaccination tags, who in turn determined the dogs belonged to the Kasuns.
The Kasuns, meanwhile, headed home from the Lochsa, hitting Lolo - and cellphone reception - around midmorning. A string of messages awaited. Luke started calling numbers back. One of them was Reed's.
"When the husband called, I could hear the wife in the background just crying in hysterics," Reed said.
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After six days in the mountains, Jill and Candy "were pretty beat up," Luke said. Each dog had lost about 15 pounds and their feet were a mess. Jill also had an eye infection. They went immediately to Pruyn after Reed returned them.
The couple repeatedly expressed thanks to Reed, to all their friends who helped look for the dogs, and to the Missoula County Sheriff's Department. Now that the dogs are safe, Luke said, he and his wife will turn their attention to the prosecution of Chafee and Robinson. "We're hoping they get a really stiff sentence," he said.
"It's not like it was our house or it was a Mercedes-Benz," Amanda Kasun said of their burned Blazer. "But it's like we saw the devil that day."
That chill stayed with them, she said, until Monday.
"Now it's like there really is a God," she said.
Reporter Gwen Florio can be reached at 523-5268,
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
or on CopsAndCourts.com.
Read more: http://missoulian.com/news/local/article_558f4992-f3b4-11e0-a8cc-001cc4c002e0.html#ixzz1aToHicJg
