URBANA - Roberta Pense and Armand Poulin are hoping for "an Easter miracle" in the form of their returned dog, Opie.

"I have had so many calls of sightings but no dog yet," Pense said Saturday afternoon from her husband's room at Carle Foundation Hospital. "I haven't given up hope, though."

Opie, a 1-year-old black lhasa apso, was a passenger in a semitrailer tractor truck that overturned on Interstate 74 near I-57 during a storm Tuesday night. He was lost in the melee that followed the crash.

Pense, 60. who lives near Portland, Ore., was driving the truck. She has a bruised left side and some stitches near her eye. Her husband, Armand Poulin, 61, got the worse of it, with five broken ribs and a punctured lung. Saturday, she said, he was "feeling a little rough."

She was sitting vigil with him and answering the phone with a hopeful tone in the wake of news stories about their missing dog.

"Everyone here has been so phenomenal. The hospital staff has been just exceptional. The TV, newspaper, radio has just been wonderful," she said, expressing gratitude in the midst of her sadness.

Commercial truck drivers, Roberta and Armand had unloaded in Morris and were headed to Terre Haute to reload their truck when Armand noticed they were driving on I-74 through exactly the area being described as unsafe on their radio.

"It was kind of misty and a little windy, which was rocking the truck. He'd been asleep, but then he tuned it to the weather station," she recalled.

"He goes, holy cow!, we're right in center of the places they're naming! I said, I'm going to slow down; about that time, he reached for the map basket, and he was unbelted," she said.

Roberta could see "a wall of gray right in front of us, blowing right to left. The wipers weren't even keeping the windshield clean."

As she braked, the wind knocked the truck over and into the median.

"The crash put the side mirrors through the driver's side window and took the windshield out. I think Armand may have went with the windshield," she said.

Passersby came to the couples' aid. In the confusion, no one saw what had happened to Opie.

Opie is black with a white chest and stomach.

"He has little grey eyebrows, and a large curly, bushy tail it's a jet black tail with a gray stripe. He looks like a little skunk," Roberta said.

He's wearing a red collar.

At the Champaign County Humane Society, shelter manager Michelle McKnight said she would keep an eye out for the dog.

Pense said Saturday a lady had called her at the hospital to say she thought she saw an older couple pick him up off I-57.

"I've had quite a few responses from Dobbins Downs," she said of the Champaign subdivision on the north side of I-74, not far from where their truck went over.

Barb Brown of St. Joseph, a bus driver for the Mass Transit District, felt confident that she saw the dog running down Queen's Way Drive about 2 p.m. Friday, hours before she had any clue about its circumstances.

"If I had known, that dog would have been on the bus with me," she said Saturday afternoon. "I know it's OK. It had its head down and was running down the sidewalk. Its back was muddy."

After hearing and reading television and newspaper reports about the accident, Brown spent two hours Saturday morning in Dobbins Downs looking for Opie.

"I'm just a dog lover. I feel sick for that family," said Brown, who also used to drive a truck.

Roberta said she's worried for her small dog, who's "not used to being by himself. As far as I know, he hasn't eaten. And he may need medical attention."

She has put some flyers out and there are two numbers for anyone who finds Opie: Carle Foundation Hospital public relations, at 383-4245, and her husband's hospital room, 383-6154.

Their cell phones were shattered in the crash: Roberta found their remains when she visited the site, looking for her dog.

She said it's possible her husband could be relased Monday. She said she was feeling okay physically Saturday but "emotionally, not so okay."

The accident was their first in a big rig and she's relived it many times since Tuesday. Asked by a friend if she can get back in, she said she think she'll be able.

"Any wind might make me sick to my stomach for a while," she said.

She said they'll probably rent a vehicle to return to Oregon, with or without Opie.