Notice how she points out that the garage was clean?

I talk to my mom every single day. She is doing so good. She had the babies (they aren't such babies anymore) all last weekend. I love talking to her about those kids. Her voice positively twinkles when she tells me stories about them.

And I'm sure she'll be surprised to know that just like real newspapers, articles never really go away!

Sextuplets’ caretaker lauds dog for rescuing her - Aid comes after van door traps her thumb

By Mary Clarkin - The Hutchinson News
December 11, 2005

Kingman — Carol Gunn is disappointed she has yet to find one item on her Christmas shopping list: a dog collar bearing a “Hero” medallion.

It’s for Queenie.

“She’s just a hero in my eyes,” said Gunn of the 2 1/2-year-old, 84-pound Chesapeake Bay retriever whose determination helped rescue Gunn.

Gunn only has to look at her right thumb to be reminded of that fall afternoon in the garage of her Kingman home.

Improbably, the sextuplets, born in April 2002 to Sondra and Eldon Headrick, Rago, take a back seat — literally and figuratively — in this story.

Gunn is a friend of the family and among the volunteers who started pitching in when the Headricks brought the babies home.

“They’re kind of my surrogate grandchildren,” Gunn said.

AP Photo

In this photo provided by the family, Queenie, a Chesapeake Bay retriever, rests at her home in Kingman. Queenie became a hero after leading her owner, Betty Jean Patterson, to a woman in distress Wednesday.

On Sept. 30, Gunn drove the six children — in the Headrick’s 12-passenger van outfitted with six baby car seats — to her home for a day of play.

About 4:30 p.m., Gunn buckled Grant, Ethan, Sean, Melissa, Jaycie and Danielle into their seats and turned the key in the ignition.

“The babies are saying, ’The door, the door. You didn’t shut the door,”’ Gunn said.

Gunn hopped out, hurried around the back of the van, and shoved the back edge of the van’s sliding door forward. It shut on her right thumb, locked.

She could open the front passenger door, she said, but could not unlock the sliding door.

At 5-foot-2, Gunn’s eyes and nose rose above the window. Jaycie was seated just inside.

“Try to get your shoulders outside of the harness,” Gunn said she coaxed Jaycie.

Jaycie tried, but success was limited. Meanwhile, the other children talked, occasionally looking at Gunn.

Gunn had cleaned the garage recently, so there was nothing nearby to grab. Her cell phone was in her purse in the van. No one was expected home until 10:30 at night. Her cul-de-sac home was rather isolated, and neighbors weren’t home.

How long could her thumb tissue survive? Should she try to chew her thumb off? Who could hear a shout on the especially windy day?

She yelled for help.

Working in her garden, a long block south and then east of the Gunn home, Betty Jean Patterson heard noises that sounded like a cat fight, but her cats were OK.

Queenie, however, was very unsettled.

Patterson works with the Kingman Humane Society. She had adopted Queenie, a previous victim of abuse who had suffered from a broken leg, stab wounds and head wounds.

“She would run toward the sound and come back to me,” Patterson said. “She would not give up.”

“She just kept prancing around me and whining,” Patterson said.

“I threw my tools down, and zip, she was ahead of me,” Patterson said.

“She led me across a field and at this point, I heard a lady screaming, ‘Help me, help me,”’ Patterson said.

“This lady pokes her head around the corner,” Gunn recalled. “It was like a mirage. I didn’t expect anybody to come.”

Gunn estimates her thumb was trapped about 20 to 25 minutes.

The bone did not break, but bending the thumb is still painful today.

Gunn is grateful for Patterson’s care and for Queenie’s persistence.

Patterson is proud of Queenie and said she rewarded her with a box of special dog cookies and repeated praise of “Good dog, good dog.”

“She ate about half of the box,” Patterson said with a chuckle.