SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — Nearly a week after the search began for a dog taken during a carjacking in Utah, 7-year-old Reo has been found.

The Shih-Tzu was in the car when his owner and carjacking victim, Dee Thorell, had her Lexus stolen at a Maverick Gas Station in Clearfield.

Reo has now been found and reunited with his owner.

Thorell and her son-in-law, Jeremy Willden, were posting flyers near a homeless encampment in the area of 300 South and 1900 West in Salt Lake City Saturday morning, when they found someone who recognized Reo.

“Today was the best day of my life, I think,” she said.

Before Saturday, she started to wonder if she’d ever see Reo again.

Just as they were getting ready to leave the area, Thorell said she had a feeling that she should turn around.

“I noticed the tent and I took a few steps to the car and went back to the homeless man's tent and handed him a flier, and he said, ‘Yeah, I just saw that dog a few days ago,’ and it was just kind of a spiritual experience,” she said.

The man, named John, hopped in the car with Jeremy and led him to an RV where Reo had been for the last six nights.

“I yelled ‘Reo,’ and he came to the door, so I just scooped him up and handed him to my mother-in-law,” Willden said.

He said they were starting to wonder if something bad happened to Reo, so he was surprised and shocked when he saw that it was him running out of the RV.

“It’s just an empty house without him and that was one of my thoughts – ‘What are we going to do if we can’t find him and he doesn’t come home?’ Thorell said. “It was just unimaginable.”

The people living at the camp confirmed that they had seen the carjacking suspect, Melissa Rush, drop Reo off with a family at the encampment sometime after she allegedly assaulted Thorell and stole her Lexus.

“(I’m) just so happy this nightmare is finally over. We are done now. This is the perfect ending to the whole thing, and I am just glad that it ended the way that it did,” said Thorell’s daughter, Andrea Willden.

John, the man living at the camp that led them to Reo, was paid the $2,500 reward for Reo’s safe return.