Eleven-year-old Haiden McCurry had just completed an art class at Creative Arts Center at 5:30 p.m. and was on the front steps fastening her bicycle helmet when two dogs came down the sidewalk heading west. Haiden was standing beside Carly Biggers and another friend, Sophie Hermann had stepped back inside the building.
Carly mentioned that the dogs looked menacing, but, being an animal lover at heart, Haiden shrugged it off.
"It's OK," Haiden remembers saying. "They're just passing by."
That had been true every other time similar circumstances had occurred in her young life. In the peaceful little town of Bonham, Texas no one would have guessed those two pit bulls had just pulled an innocent victim off her bicycle and then viciously attacked 44-year-old Judy Pless as she fought for her life on Main Street.
A moment later, screams seemed to fill the inside of the Creative Arts Center. Amalia Hernandez was sweeping the front room when she heard a cry for help that no mother could resist. Amalia looked out the front window to see dogs attacking Haiden.
Words of advice from her husband echoed in her head as the screams echoed in the arts center: "Once those dogs grab you," Mr. Hernandez had once said, "they won't let go."
That advice didn't stop Amalia as she raced out the front door. It wasn't until later, when one of the dogs turned and they locked eyes, that Mrs. Hernandez realized just how much she had placed herself in harm's way. Amalia has four daughters and she still remembers what she was thinking as she raced to Haiden's rescue.
"I will do whatever I have to do," Amalia recalls saying to herself. "All I could hear was her screaming and crying. I thought about my own 13-year-old girl."
Mrs. Hernandez says that, at the same time, another Creative Arts Center employee, Judy Hall, was also running to help the girls. As Hernandez began hitting the dogs that were biting Haiden with the business end of the broom, Hall grabbed the girl closest to the door, Carly, and pulled her inside to safety.
Hernandez now had the dogs retreating and the small lady was now between the pit bulls and Haiden. One of the pit bulls, a white dog with brown spots, twirled and threated to attack. Hernandez swung the broom over her head and prepared for whatever was coming next. When the dog realized Hernandez wouldn't flinch, the two dogs trotted back east towards the square.
"We have heroes among us," says Haiden's father, Steven McCurry.
But as Amalia watched the dogs disappear up the street, she knew instinctively that they would look for another victim.
She was right. Thankfully, another hero was there, too.
