Carolyn Goettel of Carrick is reunited with her 6-year-old Chihuahua, Baby.

LANCASTER TWP — Thanks to a group of Butler County volunteers, there’s a certain type of closure for a Pittsburgh family mourning the loss of their patriarch.

Baby is home.

The tiny, 6-year-old Chihuahua had been missing since her beloved owner, 79-year-old Elmer G. Goettel of Carrick, died in a pickup crash on Interstate 79 on Easter night.

Goettel, who had spent the weekend prepping his family camp in Clarion for the summer, was traveling home to have Easter dinner with his family. Investigators say his pickup truck, in the southbound lane, drifted and hit another vehicle. After the contact it drifted again and left the road, hitting an embankment, rolling and hitting a tree. Goettel was thrown from the vehicle and pronounced dead at the scene.

“We are still clueless about what happened, but we think he might have had a massive heart attack while driving,” said Fran Zuke, Goettel’s daughter-in-law. Because of Goettel’s age, an autopsy was not done.

Responders saw Baby, who had been in the truck, running up the road but didn’t realize she was associated with the accident.

“Those dogs went everywhere with him,” Zuke said. “He hand fed those dogs, and they both loved to go in the car.”

Baby is the offspring of Goettel’s 15-year-old Chihuahua, Taco, who was home at the time.

Zuke said the family upon notification of Goettel’s death instantly realized the dog was missing. But her friend said, “you take care of the family, I will take care of the dogs.” Goettel and his wife, Carolyn, have four sons.

Flyers were distributed and search teams went out to find Baby. “The people of Butler are amazing. They searched day after day,” Zuke said. “We can’t say thank you enough.”

As the weeks passed the family’s worries grew. The weather had been cold and there’s been some storms.

“Chihuahuas love warmth, and she’s so small,” Zuke said. But the family set up a Facebook account for the dog, and people had reported seeing her. So another search was held Sunday.

“We were setting up a trap with Baby’s food and Taco’s blanket,” Zuke said. “We stopped in a field and said a prayer. Not long after that, we got the call that one of the searchers found Baby.”

Baby was found among some farmhouses on East Lancaster Road. There were barns on the road, and the family believes the dog survived by eating and sleeping inside them.

“When she saw us it was like she was so relieved,” Zuke said. “Carolyn said getting the dog back brought some closure to her because, ‘this was the last thing next to my soul mate when he died.’ Finding Baby doesn’t bring him back, but it does give us so much relief to our family. Thank you, Butler County.”