Around 5 p.m. on Friday, instead of meeting friends for happy hour, Shawna Harch found herself asking passersby in Northwest Portland how to break a car window.
She had been swinging her car jack against the Mercedes window, but it just bounced off. Frustrated, she wanted to cry.
Harch wasn't trying to steal the car. She was trying to save a dog locked in the car with the windows rolled up, she explained in an essay on Medium.
According to the National Weather Service, it was 89 degrees in Portland at the time, and no doubt hotter inside the car.
Harch, a Portland woman who has worked as a public relations specialist for an animal hospital, saw the small dog trapped inside and knew it needed help. Though the moonroof was open about an inch, the dog was clearly in distress, she wrote.
The car's parking receipt showed that the owners had just left, but the slip was good for two more hours.
"I knew this was a bad situation that was only going to get worse — quickly," Harch wrote.
So she called Multnomah County Animal Services, which directed her to call the police non-emergency line. The bureau told her someone would be dispatched, but it could take a while.
At that point, Harch, her sister and another passerby started asking around for the owners, but they couldn't be found.
"Time was passing, and the dog inside the car had stopped barking and was plastered against the very back of the crate," she wrote. "I knew she was trying to get as low to the ground as possible, and I could see her panting."
According to the Oregon Humane Society, temperatures inside a car can climb to 120 degrees in 20 minutes on an 85-degree day, even with the windows cracked.
Harch tried to set off the car alarm in the hopes that the owners would hear it and come outside, but no luck.
Then, a passerby mentioned an Oregon bill that had been signed into law the day before that shields people from criminal or civil charges for breaking into a hot car to save an unattended child or animal who appears to be in imminent danger.
That's when Harch grabbed her car jack. About half an hour had passed since she noticed the dog, she said.
When her attempts to smash the window failed, a passerby helped her, suggesting she aim for the corner instead of the middle. Finally, the glass splintered.
Harch smashed through it, unlocked the back door, grabbed the crate and pulled out the dog, she wrote.
Employees from a nearby cafe brought it some water. A few minutes later, police arrived. As they were taking down Harch's information, the owners appeared.
"They were two young men who looked to be about 17 or 18 years old," she wrote. "They appeared shocked and puzzled. The owner was perplexed, saying he thought that leaving the moonroof cracked was sufficient. I, along with the police officers, explained it was not. Surprisingly, the owner of the vehicle thanked me."
In an interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive, Harch said people don't realize how hot it can get inside a car, or how fast the temperature can rise.
"When you're standing outside the car looking in it, it's easy for people to walk away because they're not in there, feeling it," she said.
She encouraged people to watch videos like this one, in which a veterinarian locks himself in a hot car. Even with all four windows cracked, the temperature jumps from 94 degrees to 117 degrees in 30 minutes.
Regardless of the new Oregon law, Harch said she would do it again, especially because she worried the dog would die before police arrived.
"Even if the law hadn't gone into effect, I would have done it anyways, because I don't think I would have been able to sleep at night," she said. "I would just feel horrible."
On Medium, Harch urged others to break car windows to save pets in danger of heat stroke, even in states without laws like Oregon's.
"In circumstances like these, inaction is unacceptable," she wrote. "The craziest thing we can do is nothing."
-- Anna Marum
amarum@oregonian.com
503-294-5911
@annamarum