Modern posse tries to corral rustlers

Karen Lake still carries pictures of her cherished horses, stolen in the dead of night from her rural Pasco County home in 2005.

The only clues left by the thieves were a cut gate lock and trailer tracks where they had pulled into her barn, put food in the stalls and lured her black Tennessee walker and a little palomino mare.

In Seffner just last month, the thieves were more brazen, showing up at a rural pasture off Williams Road days ahead of time and releasing two horses into a grassy field where eight other horses enjoyed the good life.

Then, on Labor Day, they returned in broad daylight, rounded up their two and five more as an unsuspecting neighbor watched. The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office had only a scant description of the thieves to go on. There have been few leads.

Cindy Swint, owner of three of the horses and guardian of a fourth, does not expect she'll ever see them again. She thinks they were stolen for their meat, as has been the case numerous times recently in Miami-Dade County, where butchered carcasses have been found in rural areas.

Horse theft is an extremely underreported story, said Debi Metcalfe, founder of Stolen Horses International, a nonprofit organization based in North Carolina. The organization assists people in trying to locate their stolen horses.

Some 40,000 horses are stolen each year nationwide, according to a study conducted in Texas. "I looked at that number and wondered why we don't hear more about it."

Some are stolen and auctioned, and others are stolen for slaughter.

What she's also found is that most victims are on their own. If they don't network to try to find their horses, the trail simply goes cold.

Joanne Fraley of Brandon knows how cold the trail can get. The fence was cut and her horse stolen from a pasture in Clair-Mel City in 2007. She never got one good lead.

"How could it be happening again right here in Seffner?" Fraley wonders. "They knew what they were doing, releasing those two horses ahead of time. Horses are pack animals, and they knew the horses would follow theirs."

Judy Aregano of Lutz, who also lost a horse in the Seffner theft, posted a notice with Stolen Horses International, but so far, no good leads.

Swint, who bought one of the recently stolen horses off a "kill truck" on its way to a slaughterhouse years back, owns numerous other horses in rural southeastern Hillsborough County. She said she was completely surprised when the theft occurred and saddened that she'd lost Penny plus her sister's horse and two others.

"I've lived here my whole life and to hear about horses being stolen; I've never run across it before.

"I've heard two horses were stolen Wednesday on Van Dyke Road (in Lutz), and a friend had his truck and trailer stolen in Punta Gorda recently," Swint said last week.

Metcalfe, who started her nonprofit agency after her horse Idaho was stolen from her property in 1997, had never heard about horse thefts either. She said a cocaine addict stole her horse and sold it at auction. She eventually got him back. Afterward, her e-mail kept flashing with pleas for help.

She has since started a Web site, netposse.com, named for a group of people who use computers to get the word out on horse thefts. She also uses it to help educate people on how to avoid horse theft.

"We know that people think horses are not being stolen, because they rarely hear about it," Metcalfe said. "Unless there is a body found, like what's been going on in Miami-Dade, it doesn't make the news. That's the kind of thing that moves people to action."