Colorado Springs - Her children were the first to catch the runner mid-poop, with her pants around her ankles, Cathy Budde said.
Immediately, they ran to get their mother.
"They are like, 'There's a lady taking a poop!' So I come outside, and I'm like . . . 'are you serious?' " Budde told KKTV.
She confronted the woman, asking, "Are you really taking a poop right here in front of my kids?"
"Yeah, sorry,'" the woman replied.
Budde assumed the woman would be "mortified," clean up the poop and not run in the Colorado Springs neighbourhood again.
But that would have been too easy.
The family kept finding the runner's poop, Budde said, and the dirty paper napkins she leaves behind. The apparently remorseless runner has pooped on the sidewalk in front of the Budde family's home at least once a week for the past seven weeks, according to Budde. Once, Budde was able to take a picture, which showed a brunette woman running in a gray tank top and shorts.
The Colorado family calls her "The Mad Pooper".
Budde has caught the woman mid-act three times. She has posted fliers - addressed "to the female jogger that continuously uses our walkway as her toilet" - around her neighborhood asking the woman to stop. She has taken pictures.
But the runner, who brings napkins to clean herself up, has not changed her ways.
"It's not like it's private," Budde told KKTV. "People can see you. I mean, we're seeing her."
Fed up, Budde contacted the Colorado Springs Police Department, which said the woman could face charges of indecent exposure and public defecation if she is caught.
Lt. Howard Black said that in his 35 years with the Colorado Springs Police Department, he has never seen anything quite like the mad pooper.
"This has been comical, but I also don't want to be flip about it," Black told The Washington Post. "If it's a mental health issue, she'll still be held accountable, but we would want to get her help."
Black said police, who were notified about the defecating runner over the weekend, are currently trying to identify the woman.
The mysterious part?
There is no shortage of bathrooms in the neighborhood. Budde said there is a bathroom across the street, porta-potties in a nearby park and a gas station close by.
"This is intentional," she told KKTV.
Budde's sidewalk isn't the only area being targeted. Neighbors, Budde said, have told her they have also seen the woman pooping in backyards and at a local Walgreens.
"I put a sign on the wall that's like 'please, I'm begging you, please stop,' Budde said. "She ran by it like 15 times yesterday, and she still pooped."