For Dozier, it turned out to be anything but. A car bomb exploded nearby, killing Dozier's soundman, James Brolan, 42, her cameraman, Paul Douglas, 48, American soldier James Funkhouser and an Iraqi translator (who is unnamed to protect his family). Iowa national guardsman Jeremy Koch found Dozier, 40, just minutes later. "If he hadn't tied tourniquets on both my legs, I'd be dead. I was that close," she says. She suffered a penetrating shrapnel wound to the head, two blown eardrums, severe burns on her arms and legs and femur fractures in both legs. Doctors predicted her right leg might not work properly again. The prognosis did not deter Dozier. "I've come across a lot of naysayers in my life and I like proving them wrong."
Mission accomplished. After more than 20 surgeries (even the doctors lost count) and about 10 hours of physical therapy a week, Dozier is back to work for CBS—and walking easily around Baltimore's Inner Harbor while she talks with a reporter about her past year. Only last summer, a mere 20 steps would exhaust her. "She was told that she probably would not walk," says Rebecca Shakespeare, one of her physical therapists. "But she has this fighting spirit that she is going to defy the odds." Dozier's worst trauma remains the loss of her two coworkers, and she feels "severe guilt over why we were there that day." A call from former ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff, who was also badly injured in Iraq, helped soften that. "He said, 'I know you think you're responsible, because the correspondent likes to think they're in charge. Those two guys were not followers.'"
Neither is Dozier. Raised overseas—father Ben, a former Marine, worked in construction—she felt at home adjusting to different worlds. Fleeing Iran with her family after the overthrow of the Shah in 1979, when she was 12, excited her. "We'd been through six months of curfews and gunshots. I just thought it was a big adventure." That need for drama continues. "When I see that the center of action is somewhere that I'm not, I go absolutely nuts."
Dozier spent six weeks convalescing at Bethesda Naval Hospital—helped by some surprising music and TV choices. She hooked her Ipod to a big pair of speakers, and "I had some really warlike tracks, like the music from the movie Black Hawk Down, blasting out of my hospital room. It was a good outlet." So was watching war footage on TV. But she could not face violent cartoons. "Every time Wile E. Coyote got smashed, I had to look away. Yet I could watch the aftermath of a car bombing and not have a problem with it."
The physical recovery was tough: Standing up—"the hardest part"—finally occurred after six weeks. "I was pale and fainting. There were so many levels and so many types of pain, from the smashed femurs to the burns and the [skin] grafts." She initially took pain medications but is off them now. And the mental recovery? "People kept having to remind me that I almost died. Sometimes that reminder was the only way to pull me out of the trench of depression."
Last September Dozier chose to continue her physical therapy in New Zealand to be close to her boyfriend Pete, a security consultant she met in Amman, Jordan, in 2003. (He asked that his last name not be published because of his work.) "We get each other's jobs. We understand the risks, and we're both fascinated by the Middle East," she says. They enjoy camping with Pete's children Rhian, 14, and George, 12. "We drive into the wilds and stay for a week without electricity."
By February Dozier returned to work. Her first big assignment (to air on CBS May 29): speaking with everyone affected by that Memorial Day bombing and her recovery. "The important thing," she says, "is that people get a glimpse of what soldiers go through by what I went through."
For now Dozier is happy to be in the field—even if it isn't a war zone. She recently reported on the University of Maryland's shock-trauma Medivac team. "We had to land next to a car crash scene. It was dicey. I undid my seat belt so I could film as we took off in the helicopter. I thought, 'Cool, I'm back!'"
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
