Officer of the week – Police Officer Jerome M. Dominguez

Remember September 11, 2001
Angels Among Us

Police Officer Jerome M. Dominguez
Shield 10003
ESS-3
1/11/2002

Police Officer Jerome M. Dominguez
Shield 10003
ESS-3

Jerome Domínguez had gone diving off the coast of Long Island with some police pals who were also his friends outside the job.

After exploring the chambers of a shipwrecked boat, they glided up slowly and started popping up, one after another, to take their places on their boat.

But they noticed one of them, another police officer, was missing. And, without much hesitation, Domínguez was the one to jump right back in the water.

Returning all the way to the bottom, Domínguez found his friend lying unconscious inside the dilapidated ship with insufficient oxygen left. Pulling him up, Domínguez swam toward the light of the surface, alternatively taking on and off his oxygen mask to share it with the unconscious man.

Risking his own life, Domínguez saved his pal’s more than two years ago.

But it was not the first time, and it would not be the last, that the decorated New York City cop offered all he had for the sake of others. In fact, Domínguez did it regularly, whenever he encountered people in danger or on duty as a member of the department’s elite emergency services unit.

Domínguez, a West Islip resident who grew up in the Pelham Bay section of the Bronx, was at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 and, according to reports from colleagues to his family, was making his way upward in the building when the north tower collapsed. He remains missing.

One of two sons of devout Catholic parents who spend much of their time trying to spread the faith, Domínguez, 37, had his own sense of mission.

” I once told him, ‘Jerome, don’t strain yourself so much’,” recalled his mother, Gladys Domínguez of the Bronx. ” And he said, ‘Look, Mommy, you save souls and I will save bodies.'”

After graduating from Mount St. Michael Academy in the Bronx, Domínguez entered the police academy in the mid-’80s. Following his July 1985 graduation, he became a patrol officer for a local precinct in the Bronx. Two years later, Domínguez, also in the Air Force Reserve, joined the highway division.

During the following years, he became committed to his job of helping people on the roads. Even when off duty, Domínguez carried power-cutting and other tools in his vehicle to help stalled drivers or to extricate victims at accident scenes, his relatives said.

Once, while heading to Texas for Air Force training in 1999, Domínguez encountered an overturned school bus with several children inside. He quickly took charge and rescued more than a dozen children before the bus burst into flames. His feat earned him praise, and he appeared on a television news showand was mentioned in newspapers that day. The Air Force offered him a permanent job, but he preferred an offer he got from the NYPD to join the emergency unit.

” He enjoyed himself helping people in some way, morally or physically,” said his father, Geronimo Domínguez, a physician who hosts a bible reading television program in Spanish. ” … He was very courageous.”

Besides diving, Domínguez left time to cruise on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle, sometimes along the Eastchester Bay coast near his parents’ house, formerly a waterfront home and fishing retreat of New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.

In his last conversation with his father, some days before Sept. 11, Domínguez discussed the idea of a heavenly place for souls to rest in happiness after death. His parents find comfort in their strong belief that Domínguez is already there. ” He loved helping others, and there isn’t in the Bible or anywhere else a greater love than that, giving your life for others,” his father said.

– New York Newsday Victim Database 1/11/2002

Source: NYP Angels

Patient of the week – Asia Franklin

By St. Jude/PIO
Sept. 27, 2009

9 years old

Diagnosis:

Asia was found to suffer from acute lymphoblastic leukemia in October 2006.

Asia’s Story:

Asia has always been the type of child who doesn’t focus on the future. Instead, she relishes each day as it comes. Like most little girls, she loves to color and play with her dolls. But when she was just 7 years old, Asia began developing a set of alarming symptoms that had her family worried whether she’d have a future at all.

Asia’s nose began to bleed, followed by leg pain and fevers. Then, she lost her appetite. As the number of symptoms grew, her mother, Ramona, began to suspect something was very wrong. A trip to the local children’s hospital provided the worried family with a diagnosis, but no relief: Asia suffered from acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most common type of childhood cancer. As soon as the diagnosis was made, Asia’s doctors referred her to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

At St. Jude:

Asia immediately started a two-and-a-half-year treatment protocol for ALL. She comes to St. Jude once a week for chemotherapy and is expected to finish her treatment in early 2009. Although Asia’s family was overwhelmed with her diagnosis, they were relieved to learn that the survival rate for ALL is high. When St. Jude opened in 1962, the survival rate was 4 percent. Today, it is 94 percent. “Initially I was in shock,” Ramona said of learning Asia’s diagnosis. “But now I don’t worry quite so much, I don’t shed quite so many tears.”

St. Jude has provided the family with peace. “From the day we arrived, it felt like home,” Ramona said. She is very grateful for the hospital’s generous supporters, whose donations help provide her daughter’s treatment and care, as well as housing, transportation and food. Not having to worry about such things has been a huge relief for the family.

Much to her family’s delight, Asia continues to thrive. She is in third grade and loves to sing and dance. “It’s been a wonderful experience,” Ramona said. “We’ve never lost hope.” For Asia, a bright-eyed girl who loves to live for today, St. Jude is helping to ensure her future.

Source: St. Jude

Editor’s Note: We would like to know what you think? dan@youngchronicle.com

CALVIN TSHOMBE THOMAS | Sexual Predator |Miami,Florida

CALVIN TSHOMBE THOMAS

DOB:

09/06/1973

Reported Address:

11712 NW 22nd Ct Miami,Florida

Additional Information:

Predator Flyer

Lloyd William Skovron | Sexual Predator |Miami,Florida

Lloyd William Skovron

DOB:

03/10/1951

Reported Address:

12590 NE 16TH AVE APT 604 Miami,Florida

Additional Information:

Predator Flyer

RONALD GREGORY SANDS II | Sexual Predator |Miami,Florida

RONALD GREGORY SANDS II

DOB:

04/10/1979

Reported Address:

7630 NW 14TH AVE Miami,Florida

Additional Information:

Predator Flyer

David Wayne Montgomery | Sexual Predator |Miami Beach,Florida

David Wayne Montgomery

DOB:

06/16/1965

Reported Address:

2250 NE 172ND ST APT 3 Miami Beach,Florida

Additional Information:

Predator Flyer

JANEL ST JUSTE | Sexual Predator |Miami,Florida

JANEL ST JUSTE

DOB:

12/22/1984

Reported Address:

1080 NE 80TH ST APT 3 Miami,Florida

Additional Information:

Predator Flyer

Crazy Cat Loves Water Run On His Head To Get Drink

Monkeys On Ice

Soldier of the Week- Army Major Lisa Carter

by Dan Samaria
Publisher/YC
Sept. 25, 2009

Editor’s Note:
Hometown: Atlanta, GA
Awarded: Bronze Star

When Lisa L. Carter was an Atlanta postal worker caring for her two-year-old daughter, she had a strong feeling she was capable of more. Little did she know that, almost two decades later, she would be in command of more than 90 soldiers in the sands of Iraq. Nor would she have predicted that a Bronze Star would be pinned on her uniform in 2003 for her extraordinary service in support of the 555th Maintenance Company.

Spurred on by colleagues, she joined the Army Reserves in 1987 and was forever changed when she saw a black female officer and thought, “If she can do it, surely I can do it.” From that day forward, she tirelessly reached for excellence. In 1996, she received her bachelor’s degree in social work from Georgia State University and earned Army lieutenant gold bars through the school’s ROTC program, all the while raising a family as a then-single parent.

Around the Christmas holiday of 2002, the 2/43 Air Defense Artillery Battalion and the 555th Maintenance Company received their deployment orders to Iraq with 80 percent of the company on leave. Carter had a goliath task ahead, and she embraced it. As the 555th Maintenance Company Commander at Ft. Bliss, Texas, she meticulously, safely, and effectively rail-loaded the entire company of 51 pieces of equipment in record time. Under her leadership, the unit’s support of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force aided more than 65 contact missions, recovered 45 vehicles, and repaired more than 35 pieces of equipment within a four month period. Able to maintain a grueling operational tempo, her personnel were instrumental in the battalion’s 95 percent above readiness rate during three critical weeks of intense combat. For these stellar accomplishments, then-Captain Lisa Weems (Carter) was awarded the Bronze Star.

Now back in the United States as member of the Defense Department’s Why We Serve program, the major is engaged in telling her story to fellow citizens. From a hard-working single mother in Atlanta to a distinguished Army major, Carter now sums it up: “Service members know that this is their job and responsibility – to serve.”

Editor’s Note:

Hometown: Atlanta, GA

Awarded: Bronze Star

We would like to know what you think? dan@youngchronicle.com

Source: Our Military

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