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2 months after 4-year-old's emotional support dog disappears, 'Macks' miraculously comes back

With the help of a former heavyweight champion's boxing manager, a covert police operation, $2,500 reward and $500 in cash; a boy and his dog are finally reunited.

POTOMAC, Md. — Mathis Guy can barely hear, but he sees and feels everything around him. Last Friday evening, 74 days after the dog that made his life special was gone from his backyard, the four-year-old boy could see Macks coming. 

Bolting from the backseat of his parents' car. Bounding up the driveway. Panting with excitement. The boy shrieked. He cried. His family cried. 

Two and half months after they thought he was gone forever, Macks came back.

This is a story about a boy and his lost dog and all the people, police, money and downright madness it took to reunite them. After an 18-month-old, French bulldog/Beagle mix mysteriously disappeared from a Potomac neighborhood two and half months ago. everyone and everything seemed to play a part in his return:

Eight Montgomery County law-enforcement officers, who helped set up a covert operation to ensure Macks' return; dozens of reward posters – in English and Spanish -- stapled to telephone polls up and down Fall Road; an enigmatic intermediary named Ana, who refused to give her last name but ultimately handed over the dog; $500 in cash; a reporter and a photographer playing stakeout with the cops; the former boxing manager of a two-time heavyweight champion, who saw a Facebook posting and added $1,500 of his own money to boost the total reward to $2,500; and, yes, the real stars – Mathis (pronounced Muh-teece)  and Macks, whose name was spelled M-A-X for, oh, 74 days.

We should probably explain further.

On June 10, Macks escaped from the backyard without his collar. Sandrine Hildenbrand, Mathis’ mother, was told by a neighbor that a group of workers had scooped him up and tried to find an owner before promising to bring Macks back the next day. That never happened. 

Instead, a social-media campaign was launched with a reward of $1,000 for not merely a lost dog – but the emotional support dog for a disabled four-year-old, a boy who was suddenly heartsick over losing an animal he came to love the past year and a half while he braved surgery after surgery.

Credit: Sandrine

Sandrine and her husband Cedric moved from France 15 years ago and started a family in Potomac. She knew her third child was different from the beginning, that his development was delayed. It wasn't until Mathis was two years old that he was diagnosed with Coffin-Lowry syndrome, an extremely rare genetic disorder that affects just one in about 50,000 people. 

Stemming from the lack of protein in the brain that signals cells for learning, memory and development, Coffin-Lowry syndrome leads to severe intellectual disability. It has neither a cure nor a standard course of treatment. Kids with CLS constantly have very bright outlooks on life, which helps mask a reality of constant physical therapy, supervision and surgeries. 

"We were devastated at first but then it became a relief to find out because we weren't walking through the darkness anymore," Sandrine said. "We knew the direction." 

In Jan. 2018, Mathis underwent bilateral cochlear implant surgery, in which neuroprosthetic devices (providing a sense of sound to a person with moderate to profound sensorineural hearing loss) were surgically implanted on both sides of his cranium. Three weeks later, with prompting from her husband Cedric and 10-year-old son Kyen, Macks came into the picture.

"He brings so much love," Sandrine said of Macks. "And warmth. And joy. And chaos. And everything." Still a puppy, full of energy, Macks and Mathis instantly became best friends. 

"I was never a dog person until we got Macks," she said."He changed my life. He’s so loving. Not having him, for me, was very difficult. I just kept thinking 'I know he’s out there. I hope he’s healthy. We just hope to get him back. It would be amazing.'" 

The loss was palpable for Mathis the moment he saw Macks' mug on one of the missing dog posters. "First time he saw the picture of Macks, he pointed toward it and started crying. So I knew he felt it.:" 

Enter Rock Newman, local media personality, longtime D.C. icon and once the manager of Riddick Bowe, the heavyweight champion of the world. Oh, he’s also a dog lover -- and when he saw Sandrine’s Facebook Post, he instantly got in touch with the family and offered $1,500 of his own money to raise the reward from $1,000 to $2,500.

FRIENDS!!! I want all 4,998 (Just deleted 2) to put out an APB so we can get this kid's emotional support Pooch returned. $2500.00 REWARD

"I told them, 'You gotta up that reward to get people interested," Newman said. "I didn't think nothing of it because I knew the moment I read her post how important that dog was to her son."

RELATED: Police find tiny Yorkie running loose in the streets of Frederick, Md.

[Digital story interlude: Full disclosure, Newman tipped me off to this story. Two Octobers ago, after reading a Facebook post I had written about my lost dog, he showed up on my doorstep and within minutes she was found. In my experience, if Rock is involved your pooch is probably coming home.]

Anyhow, even with a larger reward and more than one eyewitness saying she had seen a landscaping truck with a dog that resembled Macks inside the truck bed the day he went missing, the trail went cold. Other than scam artists calling the number off the posters and pretending they had Macks, Sandrine heard nothing. 

Weeks went by without a word. Then two months. Though they never told their three children, Sandrine and her husband Cedric had lost hope Macks would ever be found.

"I mean, he'd been missing the entire summer. I just figured whoever had him had kept him and we wouldn't see him again," she said. "I think I was as sad as Mathis. Me, the person who never wanted a dog." 

Then came one of those prayers-answered calls last Tuesday from a woman named Ana, who told a wild but half-believable story. She had seen one of the Lost Dog posters of Max on Falls Road.

Credit: sandrine hildenbrand

Macks, Ana said, had been sold for $100 to Ana's friend, and was now living with a different family in Wheaton, about a 20-minute drive away. She sent pictures to prove it, and it was clear from two black markings on the snout that the dog was Macks. 

One problem, Ana said: Macks had actually developed a bond with her friend’s eight-year-old son. But, of course, she added, a hefty reward such as what was being offered might coax her friend to give up the dog so she could buy her son a new puppy.

RELATED: A neighbor gave his dog away while he was serving his country. Now a devastated Marine just wants to see her again

"I went from really trusting and believing this woman was doing a good deed to feeling like this was almost extortion," Sandrine said. "It's like she wasn't motivated by doing what was right, helping a dog be with a child who really, deeply missed him."

 And that's where the sappy part of the script changed. Ana was no longer seen as the Good Samaritan, brokering the deal to return Macks to his original owner. The more she talked about "her friend" wanting the full reward in order for Macks to be returned, the more she indeed came across as a character from Disney central casting -- Cruella DeVille from "101 Dalmations."

Sandrine's husband, Cedric, spoke to a friend of his who worked with the DC Metro police's K-9 unit. The man put him in touch with Montgomery County police, who after hearing their story immediately wanted to facilitate the return of Macks to Mathis.

After texting back and forth for three days, Sandrine and Ana eventually agreed to meet last Friday night at Potomac Village shopping center, where they would swap cash for the dog.  Arriving about a half-hour early, Ana was in for an unwanted surprise. With her 11-year-old son holding Macks on a leash as he strutted around a grassy area adjacent to the parking lot, a black full-size truck with tinted windows pulled up beside her. Moments later, Ana was confronted by an undercover officer. Within seconds, more undercover officers emerged from vehicles and began asking a now-shaken Ana where and how she had obtained the dog.

A WUSA9 reporter (me) and photographer (James Hash) witnessed and filmed the entire 15-minute encounter, which became tense and emotional and ended with Ana crying and upset and Sandrine barely believing a word of the woman about to return her dog to her.

The highlight came when Macks sprinted toward Sandrine the moment he saw her. 

There were no arrests. In order to prove theft, Sandrine was told by the officers, a pet must be actually stolen from the owner's property or home. Otherwise it's simply treated as a lost pet. But the conversation was animated and ugly at times, especially after Sandrine drew five $100 bills from a blue envelope and presented it to Ana.

"[Ana] said, ' Can you just go to the ATM and give me the remainder $2,000,'" Sandrine said. "And I said, 'Absolutely not.' She said, 'You don't understand. If I don't bring them the $2500, you don't know what they're capable of.'" 

Officers told Ana if she was worried about any repercussions they could document the amount of cash that changed hands and fill out a police report to ensure her safety. Ana took a picture of the money and one of the officers' badges next to the money. She left shaken and fuming.

After obtaining a number for Ana, WUSA9 interviewed her three times over the phone this past Tuesday. 

She tried best to explain herself, saying, over and over, "Don't make me out to be a monster like everybody else." She specifically mentioned a Facebook post on Montgomery County Lost Pets. She did give us her last name but asked that we not print it or use any recognizable likenesses of her for the story.

"I never wanted to get this deeply involved in this; I thought I was just doing a good thing trying to get the boy his dog back and helping my friend out," she said.

 Ana's anonymous friend who bought Macks for $100, she said, feared her citizenship status (she said the woman was an undocumented immigrant from Central America) would lead to deportation or worse. Still, it was hard not to ask: What parent of any eight-year-old that had bonded with a dog for two months wouldn’t want to teach their child about love and sacrifice -- have them return the dog to its original owner, a boy who loved and needed him long before he came into their lives? 

 “You know, I can’t speak on her behalf really," Ana said. "When I ended up convincing her to give back the dog, she said to me, 'Am I gonna get the $1,000. So when I called [Sandrine], she said the reward was not $1,000; it was $2,500." 

Ana admits she asked Sandrine how much she was going to give her friend that had the dog, but says she never said if she did not receive the $2,500 that the family would not get the dog back. 

"Look, her son had become attached. If there was a reward, why not give up the reward?" she said. "I did say, 'You don't know these people.'" She also admitted asking for an extra $500, which would have totaled the original $1,000 reward.

She said she actually saw the officers before they left their cars and briefly thought about speeding away from the scene with Macks. But then she thought better of it.

"I had convinced my friend in to returning the dog and I knew at that point if I told her the police was there she was not going to give him up later," she said.

"I'm just frustrated, disappointed, just because the way it was done," Ana added. "I didn't feel it was necessary to bring the police. I was surrounded by seven undercover officers. Why did all those cops have to stay there? I was returning the dog. I didn't want the police involved. I saw the vehicles. I could have just driven off. But I decided not to do it. I decided to stay."

Ana finally revealed one bit of Macks trivia -- the name her friend's family bestowed on Mathis's dog for the two and half months he lived in Wheaton. "They went to see the movie, 'The Secret Life of Pets 2.' The main character's name was Max, so, without knowing, they named him Max. That makes your story more dramatic, right?"

xxx

By the time Ana pulled out of the parking lot in her flat-bed truck with her son on Friday evening, Macks was already home. When Sandrine and Cedric drove up, Mathis, his brother Kyen and sister Amelie came out to meet Macks with their nanny, Marcela.

"Laisse la laisse partir," Cedric said in his native French.

"Let the leash go." 

 Sandrine dropped the leash and Macks began his sprint through the yard, straight to his family, straight to Mathis. Seventy-four days and so much manpower, money and madness later, they were together again.

*If you are interested in more information about Coffin-Lowry syndrome, the Coffin-Lowry Syndrome Foundation can be found at https://clsf.info/

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