What a bummer, and a heavy load to be moving around in the yard.
Many moons ago I had a situation like this, my dog woke me up having a fit, he wasn't in the yard.....I went out to see what was up and there were the kids just making back over the fence out of my yard. They had grabbed my plants (really, they don't care about your pot) I would have figured it was kids anyway as who would pull a plant in veg? I found a piece of porkchop on the ground that they probably brought to bribe my dog with...that scared the crap out of me because it could have been poisoned or something.
They left the roots and sure enough the plants came back full force. I had three plants, they were dug into a coffin trench, so there was no moving them...they recovered to about 6 feet tall, but you couldn't see them unless you looked over the fence. We knew they would be back, but figured maybe they would be smart enough to wait until the plants were in bud.... but decided against having the dog sleep outside.
What we did, was go to the outdoor supply store and bought them out of "treble hooks" and hung them all over the plants like Christmas ornaments. As the plants filled in, you couldn't much see the hooks, especially at night. We figured nobody could jerk them up again without at least having second thoughts after getting hooks in their hands...and at the least, if it was someone we knew, we would notice their injuries.
Didn't slow them down a bit, they came back just at the start of bud (kids) and snatched them again. We never did figure out who snatched them...but after getting over the sting of losing the plants...I admit I smile every time I think about their bloody little mits and the leaf they had to show for it.
Sound cruel? hahaha, I didn't think so, it was WAR.
Bring her in if you can.