Paula Rodriguez and her canine, Maia, have been separated whereas on their approach from the Dominican Republic to San Francisco on Aug. 18. Rodriguez was turned away by border brokers and compelled to catch a flight residence with out Maia, who was misplaced by Delta Air Lines employees.

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Paula Rodriguez and her canine, Maia, have been separated whereas on their approach from the Dominican Republic to San Francisco on Aug. 18. Rodriguez was turned away by border brokers and compelled to catch a flight residence with out Maia, who was misplaced by Delta Air Lines employees.

@ATLairport/Twitter

Maia the canine was discovered exhausted however in good well being on Saturday after three weeks of evading seize at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport — the busiest on the planet. She had escaped from her crate whereas it was being loaded onto a flight from Atlanta to the Dominican Republic.

Paula Rodriguez was touring from her residence within the Dominican Republic to San Francisco for a trip on Aug. 18 when issues took a flip for the more serious. Her visa was canceled, CNN reported, and he or she needed to spend the night time in a detention heart earlier than a return flight residence the next day.

But when Rodriguez went to board her flight residence, Maia was nowhere to be discovered, and border enforcement officers demanded she get on her flight with out her canine. Two days later, Delta Air Lines informed Rodriguez the canine was on her solution to the aircraft when employees opened her crate and he or she escaped, CNN reported.

Delta stated in an announcement to NPR that the airline labored with airport employees to seek for the canine, together with “around-the-clock” visible searches as situations allowed and nighttime searches with night-vision goggles.

According to a GoFundMe web page began by Rodriguez’s sister, Maia and her proprietor had been inseparable for nearly seven years, “which is probably why Maia so desperately broke through her kennel bag when they were separated,” the web page reads. “Maia needed to get back to Paula, especially after a very stressful travel.”

Robin Allgood, who is named a volunteer animal restoration specialist, created a Find Maia Community Facebook page on the finish of August to assist reunite Rodriguez along with her beloved pet. She additionally posted indicators for the misplaced canine, which paid off when a name got here in at 2:30 a.m. on Saturday from a FedEx cargo employee who had noticed Maia.

“He told me he had seen her at 5pm on Friday, he saw her on Thursday and several other employees had seen her during the week,” Allgood wrote on Facebook. “I jumped out of bed and headed straight to the airport.”

She spent the remainder of the day getting the runaround from airport safety and employees, Allgood stated, bouncing backwards and forwards between the FedEx cargo facility and the Delta terminal on the airport. It wasn’t till roughly 6 p.m. that one other name had are available in that Maia had been noticed, and Allgood was finally allowed onto the airport grounds to try to seize the lacking canine.

Allgood took the matter into her personal palms, actually, crawling below a cargo rack to lastly catch the canine.

“I got to her and she still hadn’t noticed I was behind her…I took a deep breath and just grabbed her around the waist without hesitating,” she wrote. “The next thing I hear is someone yell Robin’s got her!”

The Atlanta airport shared the excellent news over X, previously often known as Twitter, on Sunday morning.

Maia and Rodriguez have been lastly reunited on Sunday and have since returned residence to the Dominican Republic, Allgood posted on Facebook.

According to the Department of Transportation’s 2022 Air Travel Consumer Report, greater than 188,000 animals have been transported by airways in 2022, throughout which era seven animals died and one was misplaced. And though incidents like Maia’s are uncommon, they typically make headlines.

A Bengal cat named Breezy escaped from her service at Denver International Airport in mid-August and spent a number of days roaming the airport grounds earlier than she was caught and returned to her proprietor, NBC 9 News reported.

NPR previously reported {that a} 4-year-old cat named Rowdy went lacking in Boston’s Logan International Airport in late June 2022. Rowdy acquired unfastened from her service after flying in from Frankfurt, Germany. Airport employees, animal shelter volunteers and building staff spent three weeks attempting to catch the cat earlier than she was efficiently apprehended.

And in May 2022, a canine named Rocky roamed across the Tampa International Airport for greater than per week earlier than he was caught and reunited together with his homeowners. Rocky had slipped out of his collar whereas on the curbside baggage declare, Tampa Bay 10 News reported, and was finally discovered hiding in bushes outdoors the airport.