Chief the yellow lab has been there for Rose Nese through thick and thin – so when a carjacker took off with her vehicle while Chief was hiding in the back seat, Nese was "hysterical".

The East Boston woman had left her SUV running for just five minutes on Sunday evening so she could run into a convenience store to buy a lottery ticket. When she came back outside, the car – with chief inside – was gone.

"I really don't care about the car," she told CBS News. "I just want Chief back."

"He's basically a lovable yellow lab. Friendly, he loves everybody and everything," Nese said. "He rescued me, actually. A year ago, my mother passed away, and two days later, I had a fire and I lost my home."

As the dognapping was reported by local news outlets, Nese's friends and family set up "what amounted to a war room" in her apartment. The group tirelessly searched for the white SUV and did what they could to reunite the Boston woman with her dog.

Even the animal shelter who has cared for Chief in the past wrote about the carjacking on social media in hopes that someone would spot the friendly dog.

Finally, after a very long 24 hours of searching, Chief turned up totally unharmed in the back of the SUV at Everett cemetery just outside of Boston.

And the reunion was a happy one.

(WATCH the video below or our international viewers can watch it on the CBS News website) – Photo by Rose Nese