The Menlo Park Fire Protection District Board had a special guest at its meeting on Tuesday, July 21: Prieta, the 7-year-old dog that Menlo Park firefighters recently rescued from the San Francisco Bay.
Prieta was reunited with her owner, East Palo Alto resident Maribel “Mary” Juarez, on July 16 after being missing for almost two weeks. At the meeting, Juarez expressed deep gratitude for the firefighters who saved the shivering and wounded dog.
“I don’t go anywhere without her,” Juarez said in Spanish through an interpreter. “She’s like my partner.”
The soggy dog was extracted from the Bay by Menlo Park firefighter Tyler Estkowski, who leaned over the bow of Menlo Fire’s Airboat 77, reached into the water and scooped Prieta up with one arm.
While in the Bay, Prieta was beset by seagulls and suffered a gash in one cheek. She had swum almost half a mile from Cooley Landing Park in East Palo Alto, where she had been spotted by someone who called 911 to alert authorities.
After being bundled in a jacket and brought to shore, the Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA reunited Prieta with her owner. Juarez said she’d been searching for her dog since the Fourth of July and had visited local animal shelters several times in hopes of finding her pet.
Virginia Chang-Kiraly, Menlo Park Fire’s board president, called the rescue one of the most dramatic she’s ever seen.
Community members watch drone footage of Menlo Park firefighters rescuing Prieta from the San Francisco Bay at the Menlo Park Fire Protection District board meeting at Station 1 in Menlo Park on July 21, 2026. Photo by Karina Patel. 
Maribel Juarez , center, holds her dog, Prieta, at the Menlo Park Fire Protection District board meeting honoring the firefighters that rescued the pooch from the San Francisco Bay on July 21, 2026. Photo by Karina Patel. 
From left, Menlo Park Fire Protection Board member Robert Silano, President Virgina Chang Kiraly, and Director Chuck Bernstein at a meeting at Station 1 in Menlo Park July 21, 2026. Photo by Karina Patel.
“This is the happiest ending for all of us,” Chang-Kiraly said after thanking the airboat’s crewmembers who plucked the “brave little” dog from the Bay.
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Very happy for them both!
Glad they have been reunited. This little dog was separated from its owner for 17 days and then was found swimming in the Bay at Cooley Landing? How did it survive in an area that has coyotes, foxes, and bobcats actively hunting on most nights? Again, are the homeless people and their dogs related to this at all?
There are indeed unaddressed questions. Were there witnesses as to how this incident evolved? Had it been seen during that 17-day hiatus? Why, after presumably spending two and a half weeks on its own, did this dog resort to jumping into a huge body of water and apparently head for open water? Was it being chased? By what? What could possibly have been its destination? Who knew that seagulls so easily morph into opportunistic predators?