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Chelsea Blackwell’s dachshund Blue went missing on Monday and the distraught owner went to find it.
She drove for an hour before encountering a line of cop cars and people with cameras near the Greyhound bus station in Albany, New York, and she called off her search to investigate.
“I pulled over and I was like, oh man, did someone get shot? she said Wednesday. “I mean, there were about eight police cars. There were all these people with cameras.”
Luckily, no tragedy lurked — Blackwell had stumbled across a film crew — and their quest ended in a million-dollar fortune.
Her 15-year-old dog has been found by a movie star who has rescued dogs in the past.
“I started asking everyone if they’ve seen my little brown dog,” she said.
“You won’t believe it,” she said, the crew told her but a celebrity found her pooch.
One call and about an hour later a gray car pulled up and there was little Blue sitting on the lap of two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank.
“I thought, ‘No way,'” Blackwell said. “As soon as she got out of the car, I kissed Blue and said, ‘Thank you.'”
Blackwell asked Swank for an autograph, but Swank did a better job: they took a picture.
“I had stopped and asked if anyone had seen a small brown dog? A man walked up to my car and said, ‘Yes, this woman picked him up,'” she wrote in her post.
“I said who? He replied, a celebrity,” Blackwell wrote. “He called the person who had him. And they said she was on her way back. You’ll never guess who had it?”
The Million Dollar Baby himself.
“She’s not the kind of person,” Blackwell said, “to blow a horn and tell people what she’s done.”
Swank is no stranger to canine rescue.
“Every dog I’ve ever rescued and shared my life with had every unique way of being in the world,” Swank, who has adopted numerous dogs, once said in a YouTube video posted by People magazine .
Swank started a foundation, Hilaroo — a portmanteau of her name and the name of a dog she adopted, Karoo — that reunites abandoned dogs with children who the foundation says have been “abandoned by society.”
For Blackwell, the loss of Blue would have added to the upheaval in her life after she lost her mother in August and another relative soon after. Blue got lost after coming out of the backyard with Blackwell’s other dog, Ladybug. Ladybug came running home screaming, but Blue was nowhere to be seen.
“I’ve just lost my mind because I’ve had Blue since he was a little pup,” she said. “After losing my mother and my cousin, I didn’t want to lose my best friend as well.”