Dante Rowley and his fiancée Stephanie Calderon were flying home to San Diego from Chicago when a Ring alert came in. Someone had climbed their fence, pulled a ladder out from behind the shed, and gone in through a second-story window they’d left cracked.
“We looked on our app as we were taking off and we saw this ladder that was on our back porch going to our second floor,” Rowley told Fox 5 San Diego.
They watched the rest of it on airplane Wi-Fi. The man, later identified by police as 57-year-old John Cline, took off his shirt and shoes, sat down on a bench in the foyer, and went through the refrigerator. He ate yogurt, turkey, and cheese, then lay down and took a nap on the dog bed.
Their 4-year-old golden retriever, Nash, was home for all of it, but he didn’t bark. Instead, he brought the man a toy. When that didn’t work, he went and got another. Security footage shows him trying at least three times.
“Nash is not the greatest guard dog,” Rowley told NBC 7 San Diego. “We thought that he would be barking at people, and he did the exact opposite.”
Calderon called her brother, who called the police, and Rowley texted the San Diego Police Department and gave officers live access to the camera feed. “I freak and call my brother and he calls the cops, and they get here immediately, in five minutes,” Calderon said.
Cline was inside for about 30 minutes. When officers came in, he tried to get out through a first-floor bathroom window and was arrested in the backyard.
Nash met the police at the front door with a toy.
Rowley says they’re putting in a taller fence and an alarm system. He also has a new perspective on his dog’s personality.
“We thought, ‘Wow, he’s way more well behaved with that guy than he is with us,’” he said.
