N.C. EMTs Reunite Family with Pooch After Wreck
Feb. 04--Casey Woods said he noticed the dog right away.
The small dappled dachshund was running around the parking lot of the Emergency Medical Services base in Kings Mountain, scratching at the building's door.
Woods, a Cleveland County paramedic, and EMT Basic, Sarah Truelove, called to the dog and it came straight to them.
Truelove took a sheet and they wrapped it around the small animal while Woods held it on his lap.
"We didn't know whose dog it was or that it was missing," Woods said.
They gave it some food and water and tried to calm down the frightened animal.
Dog disappears after wreck
Two days earlier, less than a mile from the EMS base, Christina McCartney and her daughter Alyssa were in a car wreck.
They had been traveling with family to Midway Lakes on a Saturday afternoon and had Oscar, their dachshund, with them.
They were on Shelby Road near Ingles in Kings Mountain when Christina said her sister, who was driving, blacked out.
Christina said she grabbed the wheel and tried to control the car, but it crashed into a pickup truck and sideswiped another car.
When the car came to a stop, she opened the passenger door and Oscar flew outside.
"I didn't even see what direction he went in," she said. "My mind was getting the babies out of the vehicle."
One week later, and 10-year-old Alyssa McCartney still has a purple bruise circling one eye.
She has a healing skull fracture.
Christina's arm, which has torn ligaments, is wrapped up and held still by a foam brace.
She said she may never be able to fully bend that arm again or regain complete use of her fingers.
The mother and daughter were first taken to Cleveland Regional Medical Center in Shelby and then transported to Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte.
William McCartney said during the two days his daughter spent in the hospital, she kept asking for Oscar.
He said he told her "a little white lie."
Family was keeping the dachshund while she was in the hospital, he said, hoping to buy time until Oscar could be found.
In the days following the wreck, people scoured the roadside along Shelby Road, looking for the small, dappled dachshund with silky brown fur and one green, one brown eye.
Christina said people searched from sun up to sun down.
They posted fliers and pictures.
A police officer picked up every stray dog he came across in hopes one was Oscar.
But there was no sign of the little dog.
On the day Alyssa was discharged, Christina said the McCartney's stopped at her mother's house in Gastonia to pick up their son, Ryan, who had stayed with his grandma during the hospital stay.
While they were there, she got a phone call.
It was Truelove.
Oscar was wearing a collar with a tag that had the family's phone number.
She asked Christina if she was missing a dog.
"I think I found him," Truelove said.
Christina immediately told her mother she had to go.
"They found my baby," she said.
"She was smiling from ear to ear," William McCartney said.
Woods said he was thrilled to reunite Oscar with his family, especially after finding out the McCartney's had been in a wreck and a little girl was missing her dog.
Christina said she has no idea where the dog could have been for two days, or how it avoided all the searchers.
Shelby Road is a high traffic area. Woods said it was amazing the small dog didn't get hit.
"I am very thankful and appreciative," Christina said.
Reach reporter Rebecca Clark at 704-669-3344 or rclark@shelbystar.com or follow on Twitter @TheStarRebecca.
Copyright 2013 - The Star, Shelby, N.C.
