Sandra Sosa vividly remembers the day she nearly lost her dog, Cookie, to a fire in November of last year.
On Thursday, she thanked the firefighter who rescued the dog - Abner Ney, a veteran lieutenant with the Fayetteville Fire Department.
After the rescue, Ney told a reporter he was only doing his job and was "no damn hero."
But Sosa says, "I beg to differ."
On Thursday afternoon, she and her partner, Roland Kelly Jr., met Ney at fire station No. 6 on Cliffdale Road. They presented him with a 16-inch Santa figure dressed in fire rescue gear and holding a ladder and hose. They had found the figure while shopping at a yard sale.
"As soon as we saw it, Roland said, 'we're going to buy it,'" Sosa says. "I would have given my last dime for it."
She put the firefighting Santa on a desk in the office, and Ney and other firefighters went out to meet Cookie.
The black-and-white cocker spaniel is 5 to 7 years old, and has one blue eye and one brown eye. A neighbor left her with Sosa and Kelly, supposedly only temporarily, but never returned for the dog.
Cookie went right up to Ney, who was seated on a bench outside the station, and he petted her affectionately. The firefighter did not say much but seemed to enjoy the moment.
Sosa says of Cookie: "She's a marshmallow anyway."
The first meeting between Ney and Cookie was very different.
During the fire, the dog was trapped inside Sosa's home on Bragg Boulevard as flames consumed it.
"She would not come out of the bedroom," Sosa says. "I had a purse in there and all my credit cards and $400 in cash, and I couldn't care less about it."
Sosa, who had been standing on the lawn waiting for the Fire Department, had a sudden wild idea to try to save Cookie and grabbed a garden hose.
"A man, I think he was a soldier, grabbed me and said, 'You're not going anywhere. You can fight all you want.'"
Minutes later, Fayetteville firefighters came to battle the blaze at the house, located near the McPherson Avenue intersection. Among them was Ney, a 24-year veteran of the department. His duties at the scene included doing a secondary search of the home for survivors.
He found Cookie.
The dog was scared and every time he tried to reach for her, she "snapped at me," Ney told a reporter afterward.
"I realized I had my air mask on and I was all dressed up," he said. "(The dog) didn't know who I was."
He shed his helmet and mask, which showed Cookie "I was human under all that."
It earned the dog's trust, and soon the firefighter emerged from the home with Cookie in his arms. He gave the dog a little oxygen, and she was fine.
Sosa says the fire, which did $50,000 in damage, was the cap to a tough year for her and Kelly.
The fire is believed to have started upstairs, she says, where they never go. Kelly is an above-the-knee amputee, and Sosa had just broken her femur shortly before the fire.
The house has since been razed, but Sosa says she and Kelly love their new home, located not far from where Bragg Boulevard intersects Pamalee Drive.
"We couldn't be happier."
As for Ney, his matter-of-fact demeanor tickles Sosa, and she jokingly calls him a curmudgeon.
And whether he likes it or not, she also calls him a hero.
Columnist Myron B. Pitts can be reached at pittsm@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3559.
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