October 2021 Employees of the Month: MIA team helps passenger find his lucky dog Penny

MIA’s Lost and Found office receives thousands of unique missing items annually, but one of their recent finds was truly a first of its kind: a Japanese Shiba Inu hunting dog, found left behind near a TSA checkpoint. The stranded pup was turned in to Miami-Dade Aviation Department (MDAD) Operations Specialist Rosa Garcia at the Lost and Found office, who immediately called her supervisors to discuss what to do next. The group could tell that the dog was well-trained and very family oriented, including being house broken. While the team of employees was debating what to do and how to find its owner, Rosa offered to take it home with her until the owner could be located. Rosa and her husband Christopher Ferreiro, who is also an MDAD Operations Specialist, welcomed the dog to their family and took care of her as one of their own. Three weeks later, the Lost and Found office was contacted by the dog’s owner, who had just been released from the hospital and was looking for his lost dog Penelope (or Penny for short). The owner had a serious medical issue at MIA and had to be rushed to the emergency room the day Penny was found. In the rush of being transported to the hospital, Penny was accidentally left behind. The owner arranged to pick up Penny, and even though it was her day off, Rosa came to the airport to reunite Penny with her owner. The reunion brought new meaning to the saying, “Find a penny, pick it up, and all day long you’ll have good luck.” In recognition of Rosa and Chris’s care and customer service for Penny and her owner, they were named MIA’s Employees of the Month for October.