Arizona Community Helps Find Surprisingly Elusive Missing Pet Tortoise

Mar. 15, 2025

Photo: Cindy and Greg Iverson

Never underestimate a tortoise’s ability to roam.

On the morning of June 19, Cindy Iverson let her two dogs outside to go to the bathroom, but only one dog returned. She went into the yard to investigate, found her dog, and discovered that a storm had blown open her back gate, allowing her 12-year-old tortoise Elliot to escape.

“We panicked,” Iverson, a 60-year-old sonographer, told PEOPLE. “We looked everywhere. They’re so nomadic. They just walk and walk, these tortoises. Once they get out, they can walk miles and miles.”

Iverson contacted her neighborhood email list and shared the news of Elliot’s disappearance.

“Immediately, one person replied and said, ‘Hey, I lost my turtle a couple years ago, a girl delivering Door Dash saw a tortoise last night, had her dad Google to see if anyone lost a tortoise, and they contacted me,'” Iverson said of what happened next.

The neighbor connected Iverson with the driver that spotted the tortoise. The woman told Iverson that she helped the 150-pound African Sulcata tortoise get untangled from a drainage ditch while out on delivery and that she would keep her eye open for the reptile.

“The fact that she knew that she saw him and where he was going was hugely helpful,” Iverson said. “She was amazing.”

Iverson also posted on NextDoor and the Oro Valley Community Facebook page about Elliot’s escape.

“Hundreds of people responded,” the tortoise’s mom said. “I just couldn’t believe it.”

“It was just stunning to me,” Iverson said of the support.

RELATED VIDEO: Tortoise Enjoys Scratches from Zookeeper

“I was just amazed that people were willing to help look, and it was like a needle in a haystack,” Iverson said.

By June 20, the day after Iverson discovered Elliot’s escape, someone found the tortoise. Elliot turned up caught in the fence of a horse farm.

“He came right to me when he saw me, but we tried to put him in the wagon, and he was having no part of that. So we just pulled the wagon, and he followed us all the way across that property, across the neighbor’s property, to our car, and then it took two of us to lift him in the SUV and trot him home,” Iverson said of the reunion.

“He didn’t look terrible considering he’d been gone for a day and three quarters,” she added.

Iverson and her entire community are overjoyed to have Elliot back safe at home.

“People were so excited that we found him,” Iverson said. “They’re like, ‘Oh, what a good ending. I needed to hear some good news.’ "

source: people.com