The young woman seen in this recently released surveillance video swiped a beloved pooch from a Manhattan real estate investor on Sept. 11.
Detectives are asking anyone with information on the sticky-fingered thief to immediately call CrimeStoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS. All calls will be kept confidential.
In the footage from an Food Emporium at 943 Second Avenue, the unidentified woman is shown smiling while strolling down aisles with the dog she had just brazenly stolen from the Manhattan man when he briefly ducked into a Starbucks.
“I consider him like a son,” said anguished David Maidman of “Teddy,” his missing 8-year-old miniature Labradoodle.
“I’m 76. I’ve had dogs all my life — this one is the best,” Maidman said. “I spend more time with him than any human being, actually.”
Maidman, a championship bridge player, had taken Teddy for his nightly walk Sept. 11 after his wife, Nancy, asked him to get her a cappuccino.
Man and dog went to the Starbucks on Second Avenue and East 50th Street as they have “hundreds” of times before, Maidman said. He tied Teddy’s leash to a phone booth and went into the coffee shop, which does not allow animals.
When he came out minutes later, Teddy was gone.
Maidman’s wife, Nancy, said her husband was in “shock.”
“We were both just besides ourselves,” she said. “I didn’t close my eyes that night.”
The couple quickly sprang into action, blanketing the neighborhood — where Teddy is widely known as a friendly pooch — with 200 fliers and posting a reward offer on Craiglist seeking his return. They also alerted cops.
A week later, a woman called Nancy and told her “she had seen the flier and she was sure she had seen [Teddy] in the Food Emporium the night that he went missing,” Nancy recalled. The grocery story is just a block away from the Starbucks.