Kimberly Dozier, a CBS News reporter, spoke to students on Oct. 6, about the day she was critically injured in Iraq. Dozier spoke about her experiences and miraculous tale of survival. “That’s how I went from being a reporter under siege, ideologically, to all this — becoming the story we have been covering,” she said.
What reporting “under siege,” as she calls it, has taught her is to listen to what she calls her, “internal compass.”
“If I had listened to the people judging my reporting, or the people who have told me I would never walk properly again, or to some of the folks who said I would always be living with nightmares from the attacks, if I had listened to any of that stuff then I wouldn’t be where I am today,” she said.
On Memorial Day in 2006, Dozier and her crewmembers Paul Douglas and James Brolan, met with Captain Funkhouser who brought them to where, the day before, a roadside bomb went off.
Funkhouser commented to her that the insurgents were probably watching them right at that moment.
The insurgents were, in fact, watching them and it was at that moment when everything changed. “They waited until we were about 20, some of us closer, feet from the car bomb, and they command detonated it with a cell phone,” said Dozier, “approximately 500 pounds of explosives turned the car into a wall of burning shrapnel heading for all of us.”
Captain Funkhouser and James Brolan were killed instantly, and Dozier was left in critical condition. Both her femurs were shattered, her femoral artery was nicked, and she was covered in burning shrapnel from her hips to her ankles.
While in the hospital she coded five times — it took over two months for them to “rebuild me,” Dozier said. Moreover, she learned about trauma recovery and realized that she needed to cry and needed to watch news coverage of Iraq. “I needed to have those nightmares and go through it,” exclaimed Dozier.
When asked if she wanted to return to Iraq she said she would and have been asking her superiors to let her. “I don’t go to cover wars; I go where the big news is and if danger and risk comes with it that is part of the job that you have to take into consideration,” she said.
Dozier’s book, “Breathing the Fire” provides an in-depth look at her story.
The second “My Life As?” will be held on Oct. 22 in the Student Activities Center Auditorium and feature investigative journalist Scott Higham of the Washington Post.
