Homecoming for lost canine

After roaming the streets of West Philadelphia for two weeks, Alice has finally returned to Wonderland.

Alice, the White Dog Cafe's canine mascot, was reunited with her owner this weekend and is now safe and sound in her home above the Sansom Street restaurant.

The three-year old tan and white mutt was returned to Judy Wicks, who owns both the dog and the restaurant, on Sunday by Lisa Webber, a nurse at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

"We're calling it the miracle on 34th Street," Wicks said with a chuckle. "She only had a cut on her leg, and she didn't seem to have lost much weight. I don't know where she got her food and water for two weeks."

The staff couldn't understand it either, since Alice's normal diet consists of the wait staff's gourmet lunch leftovers -- not exactly Kibbles 'n Bits.

The saga began on the night of Nov. 19. Wicks was walking Alice without her leash when a Penn Escort van drove by and sideswiped the dog. Although she wasn't seriously injured, Alice was startled and took off, racing up Sansom Street.

Wicks searched long and hard throughout the night. She asked passers-by which way they had seen the dog run, but the trail of paw prints led nowhere.

For Wicks, the next two weeks proved to be both distressing and hopeful, as community members, restaurant patrons and workers all shared their time and encouragement to help find Alice.

Busboys, cooks and waiters joined Wicks as she put up thousands of "lost dog" posters out-of-town and in the neighborhood, including all across Penn's campus. Wicks said the outpouring of support from students, Penn police and the general Penn community was incredible.

"The Penn Escort vans went out of their way to look for the dog," she said. "They were very responsible in helping to look for her, and I was grateful that they took the time to do so."

Wicks had made a commitment to herself to put up posters for two full weeks. She also took out $3000 worth of advertisements in local newspapers to help find her furry friend and offered a $300 reward to the person who found Alice.

But Wicks admits that as the lonely days passed with only false leads to show for her search, she was starting to lose hope of ever finding Alice.

Webber was peering out a second floor window when she spotted the dog across the street, roaming around inside the empty enclosed lot where the Civic Center once stood. She walked to the abandoned lot to look at the dog's collar, but Alice, a normally playful pup, was too shy and frightened to cooperate.

In the meantime, the mother of the nurse's patient had gone outside to a street pole and ripped off one of the "lost dog" posters that Wicks and her team of supporters had put up. She gave the poster to the nurse, who immediately called Wicks to come and pick up Alice.

"I was crying, and she was barking," Wicks said of the emotional reunion. "We were rolling around on the sidewalk."

Wicks decided to split the reward between the two heroines. The nurse requested her $150 be donated to the infant care center at CHOP.

The mother of the nurse's patient had been staying at the Ronald McDonald House, a home-away-from-home for the families of seriously ill children receiving treatment at nearby hospitals.

As fate would have it, that's an organization that the White Dog Cafe has supported for years through gift certificates for people staying there.

"It's the whole concept of the good deed comes back to you," Wicks said.

While Alice may be the current "white dog," she is not the original. The restaurant's namesake comes from the story of Madam Blavatsky, a former owner of the restaurant.

The story goes that Blavatsky had a diseased leg, and doctors told her that it needed to be amputated. One night before the surgery, she went to bed and had a vision of a white dog laying on her leg. When she woke up the following morning, her leg was completely healed.

As strange as it may seem, that's the legend of how the popular campus restaurant got its name.

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