Like a Dog

A dog with the absurd name of “Bohem [sic] C’est la Vie,” aka “Vivi,” escapes from the baggage area of Kennedy Airport, and the authorities rush to deploy a helicopter and a dozen police officers to scour some 5,000 acres at considerable taxpayer cost. Even “pilots in the air told controllers that they would keep an eye out for the dog.”

Why all the hullaballoo over a little dog? Because its co-owner, Paul Lepiane, lied to the police about the show dog's value, which he'd inflated to more than $100,000 “to convince them to make helicopter searches.” (He later revised its value to between $15,000 and $20,000.)

The story, which has been generating a great deal of attention in the press, takes a sinister turn however when compared to another incident at JFK just a week earlier, a story that hasn't generated nearly as much attention but is far more tragic in its consequences.

Jiang Zhenxing, a 32-year old Chinese woman who had come to the U.S., married, given birth to two American sons, and opened with her husband a Chinese restaurant in Philadelphia, paying taxes on their earnings for about a decade, went to her regular appointment at the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office on Feb. 7. She was three months pregnant with twins.

When officials learned of her pregnancy, however, she was separated from her husband and sons, shuffled roughly into a van, and taken to JFK for immediate deportation. Jiang alleges the officers "manhandled her and ridiculed her pleas for medical help until it was too late." According to one account, the officers "stopped to eat lunch themselves but gave the pregnant woman nothing to eat during her eight-hour ordeal and cursed her when she cried and told them she was in pain. By the time they reached the airport, Ms. Jiang was suffering severe abdominal cramps and begging for help in a public waiting area..." Only when bystanders could no longer just stand by as Jiang cried out in pain did someone call an ambulance. (Where were the helicopters then?) By the time she made it to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, her babies were dead.

A dog owner lies to airport authorities and gets them to mobilize a helicopter and dozens of men to search for a dog, as the nation's heart reaches out to the aggrieved owners. A pregnant woman in pain cries out for help at the same airport one week earlier and is ridiculed and mocked and ignored, as her unborn twins are left to die.

If only she'd been treated, one cannot help but lament in retrospect, like a dog.