Dog the Bounty Hunter star Beth Chapman recounted her first meeting with husband Duane “Dog” Chapman in a heartwarming interview that is resurfacing this week. Chapman, who died on Wednesday at age 51 after a battle with throat cancer, called her husband a “blonde bombshell” in the clip. She recounted how a trip to jail ended with her finding the love of her life.
In the clip filmed for an episode of Dog the Bounty Hunter, Chapman’s story began in a strange location: a supermarket. When she went to pick up some lemons, the Colorado state senator she was working for started to page her. She was in line at the time, so she left the line and went to the pay phone. Unfortunately, security thought she was trying to steal the lemons!
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“The store security kind of swarmed me and go, ‘You’re shoplifting the lemons.’ I was like, ‘Oh my God,’ right? ‘I’m not shoplifting the lemons,’” Chapman recalled in the clip, notes PEOPLE. “Now I’m a criminal, right? So I go to jail, I call this big dog lawyer … in Denver, Colorado, who happened to be a friend of Dog’s and he said, ‘You call up my friend, Dog.’ And I go, ‘Dog?’”
Chapman finally got the bong and left the jail. However, she was still getting calls to come back to fill out more paperwork. The guy who called her told her father what happened, and threatened to “drag her back to jail” if she did not go back.
“So of course I go sauntering in there and I’m waiting and then all of a sudden, this blonde bombshell comes walking out from this back room dressed in black all studded out with this long, wavy, blonde hair with this thing,” Chapman said, referring to Dog’s famous hair. “I thought, oh yes, he will be mine. Let the stalking begin now.”
Chapman said becoming a bail bondswoman was part of her plan to get to know Dog better and spend time with him.
“I knew that if I wrote a whole bunch of bad bail that the bounty hunter would have to come sit in my office so that he could go and chase my fugitives,” Chapman said. “So I proceeded to write the worst bail that there was. ‘No collateral, no co-signer? Sure, come on down.’ ‘You don’t have any money? Great, come on down. You have a pulse, right?’ So I wrote all the bad bail I could write so that I would spend all this time with him and it worked.”
Chapman died Wednesday in Hawaii, after being put into a medically induced coma over the weekend. She was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2017, and it returned in November 2018.
On Wednesday, Dog announced his wife’s death on Twitter.
“It’s 5:32 in Hawaii, this is the time she would wake up to go hike Koko Head mountain,” the reality star wrote. “Only today, she hiked the stairway to heaven. We all love you, Beth. See you on the other side.”
Chapman will have two memorial services, one in Hawaii and another in Colorado. The Hawaii funeral will take place at Fort DeRussy Beach in Waikiki, Hawaii Saturday.
“Beth had two homes – Hawai’i and Colorado. ‘I love Hawai’i the most,’ she said, so she will be sent off in true Hawaiian style, with aloha,” a press release announcing the memorial reads. “Duane Chapman is also finalizing plans for a memorial service in Colorado, and details will be announced shortly. Those wishing to post photos and videos are asked to tag with [Aloha ‘Oe Mrs. Dog].”
