Woman reunited with her service dog after vanishing from Tempe hotel

TEMPE — Andrea Albornoz was pleading for help to find her service dog after the dog vanished from her hotel room in Tempe, calling it a "life and death situation."

On Tuesday, Tempe police announced Lani was reunited with Albornoz.

“She’s gone. Lani got stolen,” Albornoz told ABC15 Monday, in tears.

Albornoz was having a hard time getting the words out, at times too emotional to even speak.

“Aside from being trained to aid me for my illness, she’s literally everything that I have. She’s my life. She is all I have,” she added.

Albornoz’s family is in Ecuador and she lives in California.

She’s in town for work. One morning, as she was getting ready to go to the Arizona Health Care Conference, she came back to an empty room.

“I went to go grab coffee from the lobby and the door didn’t latch all the way. I mean, within minutes, she was taken away from this room,” said Albornoz.

Lani’s food is right where Albornoz left it. The water is untouched.

“I’m still waiting for her…that she’s going to come back,” she told ABC15.

Albornoz says finding Lani is a matter of life and death.

“I need this dog because I have seizures and my dog is trained to save my life. She needs to come back to me,” she said.

While multiple agencies are actively working on this case, Albornoz isn’t wasting any time.

“I have 350 of these [flyers] printed. I have posters of her all over the city of Tempe. All over the city of Glendale.”

She added that she isn't going to stop until Lani is found.

“I am offering a very large reward for her.”

A $20,000 cash reward is being offered for anyone who helps bring Lani back, and she isn’t looking to press charges.

As for Andrea, she says she’s not leaving Arizona without her dog.

“I really need to find Lani. It is a life-threatening situation that she’s missing,” said Albornoz.