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A Long Island woman is alive thanks to her pit bull, who authorities say saved her from her burning home.

Jackie Bonasera told New York TV station WNBC she was drying her hair in an upstairs bathroom Friday when she heard the dog barking. She ran downstairs and saw the flames on the side of her garage.

Bonasera was able to escape, but quickly realized her pit bull, named Cain, wasn't with her.

"Then I thought about the dog -- I'm like, 'He saved my life, I have to save his.' So I just put my robe over my face and I ran back in and I grabbed the dog and then I stood out here and I watched my house burn,'" she told WNBC.

It took more than 70 firefighters from five departments to put the fire out.

[....]

Bonasera's daughter, Alexus Stallworth, called Cain "the town hero."

"He's a pit bull, too," she told WNBC. "They have such bad reps, but he's such a good boy."

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Robert Arand enlisted in the Army Air Forces in 1942 as an aviation cadet. He went to training in 1943 and by February 1945, he was headed to the Pacific — sleeping on the deck of a trawler for a monthlong journey from San Francisco to New Guinea. Arand had flown B-25s in the United States, but flew more than 40 missions in B-24s overseas — from New Guinea, the Philippines and Okinawa. He flew the 22nd Bomb Group’s final bombing attack, a strike on the Kiangwan Airdrome in China. His last mission was a reconnaissance flight from Okinawa to Tokyo and back on Sept. 2, 1945, the day the Japanese signed the surrender in Tokyo Bay.
The last time he remembers wearing his leather bomber jacket was in San Francisco when he returned from the war in November 1945. He thinks his wife, a meticulous housekeeper, must have donated it to a charity organization in Cincinnati about 1950.

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More than 60 years later, John Dodds was at a Goodwill store in Washington with his daughter, a freshman at James Madison University in Virginia, when she called him over.
“Oh, Dad, I want to show you something,” she said.
It was a leather bomber jacket from World War II.
Dodds, assistant general counsel for the Air Force and a military history buff, has a replica. But this was the real deal. The leather was a little stiff, but the jacket was still in good shape. On the back was a bearded, red-headed man with a winged helmet, along with the words “Red Raiders” and “22nd Bomb Group.” The label inside had the model and order number. The lieutenant bars were in place on the shoulders.
The jacket even had a leather name tag sewed on the front: Robert G. Arand.
Dodds is an Air Force brat. He went through the Army ROTC program in college, served as an Army judge advocate general for four years and later served in the Air Force reserve long enough to retire. He also knows a thing or two about finding information about veterans: One of his pet projects is doing research on Austin Straubel, the WWII bomber pilot for whom the Green Bay, Wis., airport is named. He also helped a friend with research on the friend’s brother, who was shot down during the Vietnam War.
Dodds paid $17 for the jacket and emailed a friend. Within 24 hours, Dodds was on the phone with Arand.
The 90-year-old veteran told him about his time in the 22nd Bombardment Group — described on their webpage as “a hell-bent-for-leather organization of men.” The unit was the predecessor of today’s 22nd Operations Group at McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas.
Arand remembered a commander with red hair, Col. Richard Robinson, whom the group was nicknamed after. He told Dodds about his five children, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. He told him he was born Dec. 7, 1922, and lives next door to one of his six brothers.
And Dodds decided that while he originally had hoped to keep the jacket, he knew he had to send it back to its original owner.

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A 2-year-old gray cat abandoned with red duct tape over his face and paws is on the mend after animal control officers found the feline gasping for air in the parking lot of a Baldwin Park animal care center.

Dubbed Amigo, the cat was discovered in a banana box by a worker Thursday morning on the lower level of a parking garage at the County of Los Angeles Department of Animal Care and Control's Baldwin Park Animal Care Center.

The words "handle with care" were printed on the box beside logos for Amigo bananas.

An animal control officer was "shocked" upon opening the box to find the young feline struggling to breathe, bound and gagged by thick duct tape, animal control center officials said in a news release.

"I can't imagine why someone would do this to this cat," said Animal Control director Marcia Mayeda said in a statement. "Animal cruelty is heart breaking, intolerable, and usually a precursor to human violence."

Amigo will live with foster volunteers to help rehabilitate him to health and get him ready for adoption. [...]

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