Woman holds onto hood of dognappers' car as it drives off in DTLA

Woman clings to dognappers' car

After her dog was stolen from a downtown Los Angeles Whole Foods, Ali Zacarias tried to stop the thieves. It led to her clinging to the hood of their car as they drove away.

LOS ANGELES - A woman is going viral for the extraordinary lengths she went to to stop her dog from being taken in downtown Los Angeles earlier this month.

Ali Zacarias was at a downtown Whole Foods with her dog Onyx on Jan. 18, when someone grabbed the pup from under a lunch table and took off. Zacharias ran after the dognapper, eventually following them to their car, before they drove right into her.

"It's hard to have them ripped away from you. I wasn't willing to just let him go," Zacarias said. My last resort was to stand in front of the car and tell them not to go, and they drove right into me, and it pushed me onto the hood, and I just wasn't going to leave the car at that point. And I held on and they took off."

A bystander filmed while the white Kia Forte carried Zacarias on its hood down Grand Avenue. Zacarias said she suffered scrapes and cuts from the ordeal, after the car swerved and she rolled off.

She said there were four people in the car — three woman and one man — all in their mid-to-late 20s, wearing t-shirts and sweats. Video from the scene showed the car had a whited out license plate with only the last number or so visible.

While Zacarias said the dognappers didn't have any distinguishing features, Onyx does. Onyx has one green eye and one pale blue eye, with a mottled coat.

Since the incident, Zacarias has worked tirelessly to track down her buddy, even offering a reward for Onyx's return. She said there's been at least one credible sighting in Gardena, but there have also been false alarms.

On Sunday, Zacarias was called out to a local CVS, where she was hoping for a reunion, but it turned out to be a hoax. Now, she's desperately hoping for Onyx's safe return.

"Please, just sell him back to us at this point," Zacarias said. "Like, we don't care about anything except getting him back. So we're not looking to press charges, all we're looking to do is recover our baby."

While she was hurt clinging onto the hood of that car weeks ago, Zacarias said she's grateful to the man who shot the video. Because of it, she says, people now want to help.

"I thought I was alone and completely defeated," she said. "And now I feel really supported."