It was 16 years ago and Mary Michael was going through hard times. She had three children, and her first marriage was collapsing.
That's when she met a winsome ball of fur at a Mission Viejo pet store, a little dog that seemed to smile and proved impossible to resist. She took her home and named her Rebel after Rod Stewart's "Rebel Heart."
The wolf-malamute mix proved a boon companion, comforting Michael in times of trouble and protecting her from harm even as the dog slowly became a cripple.
Then on Aug. 16, Michael and her husband, Craig, visited Riverside National Cemetery. They parked their Ford Excursion and left Rebel inside with the air conditioner running. Moments later, they saw a woman jump into the SUV and speed off, followed by another vehicle.
The Excursion was found the next day parked on a Moreno Valley street. Rebel was inside, beside an empty bowl of water. She had died of heat exhaustion. Three suspects were arrested.
A distraught Michael said Rebel would be alive today if Verizon had traced the cellphone she had left inside the car.
"They could have saved Rebel's life," she said Tuesday during a news conference outside Riverside County Superior Court. "It's my phone. It has GPS capability. We should be able to use it."
Michael, who is originally from London and lives in Hemet, has started a campaign to make such tracking easier. Many wireless companies now require warrants before tracing phones, but Michael argues that obtaining a warrant takes too long when a life hangs in the balance.
Verizon spokesman Ken Muche said state and federal privacy laws make it impossible to trace a phone without a court order. He said criminals and stalkers had impersonated customers in the past to try to find cellphone users.
"We work with law enforcement and will respond to requests from the court like subpoenas and warrants," Muche said. "We have a policy in place so our customer service people are not in a position of having to determine a person's identity."
Had Verizon traced the phone, it could have pinpointed the location to as close as 50 to 100 yards, he said.
That was cold comfort to Michael.
"If this had been done, Rebel would not have had to suffer, and we would not be going through the pain of losing her in this terrible way," she said. "I can't bear to think of what she went through during those last hours. I can't go there, it's too horrible."
