Not All Heroes are Human

I received the following story in an email and thought it was too good not to pass along. . . And then the analysis followed--be sure to read al the way through

James Crane worked on the 101st floor of Tower 1 of the World Trade Center.
He is blind so he has a golden retriever named Daisy.

After the plane hit 20 stories below, James knew that he was doomed, so
he let Daisy go, out of an act of love. She darted away into the darkened
hallway.

Choking on the fumes of the jet fuel and the smoke James was just waiting to
die. About 30 minutes later, Daisy comes back along with James' boss, who
Daisy just happened to pick up on floor 112

On her first run of the building, she leads James, James' boss, and about
300 more people out of the doomed building. But she wasn't through yet, she
knew there were others who were trapped. So, highly against James' wishes
she ran back in the building.

On her second run, she saved 392 lives. Again she went back in. During this
run, the building collapses. James hears about this and falls on his knees
into tears.

Against all known odds, Daisy makes it out alive, but this time she is
carried by a firefighter. "She led us right to the people, before she got
injured" the fireman explained.

Her final run saved another 273 lives. She suffered acute smoke inhalation,
severe burns on all four paws, and a broken leg, but she saved 967 lives.
Daisy is the first civilian Canine to win the Medal of Honor of New York
City.


Analysis: Try as I might, I have not been able to locate a single published news story mentioning a World Trade Center survivor named James Crane. And though there were indeed many canine heroes who participated in rescue operations at Ground Zero after the September 11 terrorist attack, there is no golden retriever named Daisy listed among them. In the five years since the twin towers collapsed, no evidence has emerged to corroborate this inspiring but apocryphal tale.
For that matter, the text contains glaring factual inaccuracies. We are told, for example, that Daisy found James Crane's boss on the 112th floor of Tower One. But neither of the WTC towers exceeded 110 stories. An early variant purports to have been "copied from the New York Times, 9-19-01," but no such article appeared in the Times on that or any other date. We are also told that Mayor Rudy Giuliani awarded Daisy a "Canine Medal of Honor of New York," but there is no record of any such medal being given out.

It's ironic that someone felt it necessary to invent such a story when there were at least two real-life examples of guide dogs escorting their blind owners out of the burning twin towers to safety. Roselle, a Labrador retriever, led Michael Hingson down from the 78th floor of the north tower and to the home of a friend several blocks away. Dorado, also a Labrador, guided Omar Rivera down 70 flights of stairs, an ordeal that lasted over an hour but ended with both man and dog a safe distance from the towers when they collapsed.