A 4-year-old boy and his chocolate Lab are home safe and sound after they wandered away from their Atlantic County home last month.
The Buena Vista family was having a “cupcake day” when the father, named Jason, walked away quickly to use the bathroom. When he returned, he noticed that his 4-year-old son Parker and 1-year-old Labrador Toby were missing.
“I was panicked, absolute panic. He’s my little man. I’d be lost without him,” Jason says.
Parker was able to slip out of the house through a sliding glass door that is normally locked.
“Like I said, we have two locks on the back door. For whatever reason, l didn’t check that before I went to the restroom and came back, and he chose that moment to be opportunistic,” says Jason.
Jason says he looked around his property for the pair. But when his wife Vickey called on her way home from work, they decided that it was time to get the police involved.
Neighbors and New Jersey state troopers got involved and searched the woods behind the family’s home. It was then that they heard Parker and Toby.
“If it wasn’t for them, I would have no idea to even go back there because he’s never even wandered that far from the house, ever,” says Vickey. “So I had no expectation for him to even be back there.”
The happy reunion was captured on a trooper’s body camera.
The family says that Parker was cold and lost one of his new shoes but was otherwise OK.