A Long Island animal rescue organization says it's found the puppies that were snatched from a woman's shopping cart inside a Manhattan store Monday.
Guardians of Rescue said on its Facebook page that it received an anonymous tip Tuesday, and went to a New York City home along with the puppies' owner, Suzette Bonsignore. When the homeowner returned, he confirmed he had the two six-week-old Yorkshire Terrier puppies, totally unaware they'd been stolen.
Bonsignore recounted to NBC 4 New York earlier how her puppies Mario and Mimi were taken: she was leaving the Bed Bath & Beyond store on First Avenue on the Upper East Side, with the puppies inside a carrier bag nestled in the flip-down seat of her shopping cart, when the thieves struck.
She said the two men lifted the bag from the cart and took off.
Bonsignore gave chase and screamed, "Stop, please stop!" but wasn't able to catch up to the men.
"They didn't take a pocketbook, they didn't take a purse. They took my babies," she said.
According to a family friend of Bonsignore and Guardians of Rescue, the man found with the dogs was a security guard who was working in the city Monday when a couple approached him with the stolen bag. They asked if he wanted the puppies because they could not keep them.
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The security guard, who had no idea the puppies were stolen, accepted and "happily brought them home to his wife."
It was only when Guardians of Rescue member Frankie Floridia and Bonsignore greeted him at his home that he learned what had happened. He and his wife "gladly handed over the babies," the organization said.
A photo posted along the Facebook message shows Floridia and Bonsignore smiling with the tiny puppies in their arms.
Bonsignore told NBC 4 New York earlier she helped deliver Mario and Mimi just weeks ago.
"I cut the umbilical cord. I was every step of the way with them," she said. "I was handling them from the moment they were born so it is a very painful thing for me."
She said she doesn't have any children and that the puppies are more than pets.
"Please have some compassion and return these babies to me," she said before the puppies were returned. "I'm devastated and I don't know how to go on. I just don't know how to go on."
Rescue experts had said the puppies can be dropped off at area groomers, vet hospitals or fire houses with no questions asked.
