Behind the Badge
Anaheim Police Officer Mira Han was cruising north on Euclid Street at Medical Center Drive, about 90 minutes away from wrapping up her graveyard shift, when she spotted a couple of dogs roaming loose on the road.
With the morning commute just getting under way, traffic was getting heavy and the dogs were obviously in danger of getting struck.
So Han, a 21-year veteran of the force, pulled into the parking lot of a business, opened the back door and tried to lure the canines to her patrol car by whistling and calling out.
It didn’t take much coaxing.
“I just opened the door and they jumped right in,” Han said.
The dogs, one female and one male, appeared to be buddies, said Han, who drove them back to the station, with the rear window open about half way.
On route to headquarters, Han noticed she was getting a lot of looks from other drivers and then realized it was because the cute female, who was likely a puppy, had her head out the window throughout the drive.
The dogs were turned over to Orange County Animal Control, but not before a lieutenant snapped an adorable photo of Han sitting in her patrol car with one dog sticking its head out the window and the other sitting alongside his pal in the back seat.
Han said she would have liked to keep the outgoing dog but her husband wasn’t fond of the idea.
As of Wednesday, the photo received more than 1,700 likes on the APD Facebook page and was shared more than 100 times.
To Han, rescuing the dogs was no big deal and she was surprised at the attention her act of kindness received.
“I did the same thing any normal person would do if they saw dogs in the street,” she said.
Han’s act of kindness occurred during the last week of June and was the latest in a series of animal rescues made by the officer in her career.
She’s saved dogs with collars and dogs without collars and once even rescued a Canadian goose.
Said Han, “They (animals) tend to find me.”
