From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January-February 2007:
Carol Chapman, 66, was killed along with 12 cats and her
smallest dog, Zoey, on December 18, 2006 after falling and
breaking her nose and neck while fighting a pre-dawn housefire at her
home in San Jose, California. “Chapman loved cats,” recalled Scott
Herhold of the Mercury News. “She sometimes had as many as 30 or 40
of them, not to mention Buddy, her German shepherd mix, or her two
other beloved mutts, Lacy and Zoey. Before she became sick with
cervical cancer, she rescued hundreds of cats,” placing them in
adoptive homes. A retired Santa Clara social worker, Chapman
reputedly screened adopters more thoroughly than the county screened
foster parents. She “worked with a clutch of animal rescue groups,
most recently with Furry Friends Rescue,” Herhold recalled, “often
stood outside a local Petco to interest people in taking on an
unloved animal,” and “Every other week on the Greg Kihn show on KFOX
radio, gave a short blurb offering a cat or dog to a good home.”

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January-February 2007:
Roadie, 14, a double-amputee Walker coonhound recalled by
Greg Kocher of the Lexington Herald-Leader as “a symbol of
perseverance to people with disabilities,” was euthanized on
November 30, 2006 due to incurable painful conditions of age. “In
1992,” Kocher wrote, “at only nine months old, he spent spent two or
three days and nights lying between the rails of railroad track,”
near Nicholsville, Kentucky, “after a freight train mangled his
right rear leg and left front leg. A railroad employee stopped to
put him out of his misery. The gun jammed. So he went to a nearby
farmhouse and asked if the dog belonged to anyone there. He didn’t,
but the woman who lived there began making calls, including one to
the Nicholasville Police. The police called Mike Griffitt, DVM.
Griffitt checked the dog’s tags and contacted the owner. After he
realized Roadie would never hunt again, the owner said he would take
the dog home and dispose of him. When the pup was gingerly loaded
into the truck, he wagged his tail. Griffitt asked whether he could
have him.” Roadie’s rescue and recovery was subsequently featured
by radio broadcaster Paul Harvey, CNN television, Reader’s Digest,
and Dog World. He spent the rest of his life at Griffitt’s Bluegrass
Veterinary Clinic.

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