- A missing Michigan girl made it 3 miles barefoot through the woods with her two dogs.
- A civilian volunteer found her asleep with her family's rottweiler and cocker spaniel.
A Michigan toddler who went missing likely walked 3 miles barefoot with her family's two dogs at her side before she was found hours later napping in the woods with the pups, police say.
"It was a long way from home," Jeremy Hauswirth, commander of the Michigan State Police Iron Mountain Post, told Insider of where the girl was found. "Best we can figure, she got on a trail and started trucking it with the dog. Barefoot, just headed for the sunset."
Brooke Chase, a resident of rural Menominee County on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, realized her 2-year-old daughter and two dogs, a rottweiler and a cocker spaniel, were nowhere to be found around 8 p.m. Wednesday, according to local outlet WJMN.
"We're [searching] everywhere around here," Chase told WJMN. "It's completely wooded — deep, thick woods around here. There's a swamp over there, so of course we're, like, freaking out. And after about fifteen minutes of searching for her with our friends and family, I called the cops."
Chase's call sparked a four-hour-long coordinated search effort involving local troopers, canine units, civilian search and rescue volunteers, and aerial drones — all scouring the dark woods for signs of the missing girl, Hauswirth told Insider.
Finally, around midnight, a civilian volunteer on a four-wheeler discovered the 2-year-old just as he headed to get more gas, Hauswirth said.
Hauswirth said one of the family dogs that had gone missing with the girl, the rottweiler, jumped out at the four-wheeler, grabbing the driver's attention. That's when, Hauswirth told Insider, the volunteer found the 2-year-old curled up sleeping on top of her other protector: the family's cocker spaniel.
She was about 3 miles away from her home.
The volunteer picked her up with no trouble, and she "crashed back out in his arms," Hauswirth said.
Hauswirth said he believes the toddler walked the whole three miles herself with the dogs walking alongside her.
"The rottweiler stays right next to her all the time. So I don't know if it had a collar or she just had an arm on it and was running. Because when a kid decides to go in a straight direction, they can make some tracks," Hauswirth said, adding that toddlers are "motoring machines."
The girl was checked out by medical staff and confirmed to be healthy, a police spokesperson told the Detroit Free Press.