After a bicyclist is killed, a race begins to save his beloved dog, Ava

Fear gripped Kay Hyman as she sped toward an emergency animal hospital. Across her backseat, a brown dog sprawled motionless, tongue lolling, eyes fixed and glassy. 

It is hard to imagine someone could love animals more than Hyman, the public face of Charleston Animal Society. She agonized: Would this creature die right here in her car? 

Just moments before, Hyman had left the nonprofit's North Charleston animal clinic where medical crews found the dog's jaw fractured, her brain swelling. Deep gashes crossed the furred body.

The dog, a Labrador-pit bull mix, needed round-the-clock, intensive care for the wounds she'd suffered a few hours earlier. A man, likely her owner, had been bicycling along Savannah Highway, pulling her in a 2-foot wide trailer, when a SUV hit them.

The man, young and fit, died at the scene.

But just maybe they could save his dog. 

It was Aug. 31, a Monday, and Hyman was supposed to be off work. Instead, she raced 14 miles across town to Mount Pleasant. She didn’t know it then, but the dog behind her was about to consume far more of her life than a single car ride.

At Veterinary Specialty Care, with its 24/7 emergency hospital, a team swooped in.

Hyman breathed.

Not an hour later, a co-worker called. Back at the crash site, they couldn’t find ID on the man who'd died. They couldn’t unlock his cellphone either.

Yet he didn’t appear homeless. He was hauling high-end camping gear and food for his dog. But the dog had no microchip.

Who were they?

Discovering Kris and Ava

They had one clue. A couple of deputies remembered talking to the man earlier that day. He’d told them about his cross-country bicycle journey from New York to the Florida Keys.

When Hyman heard that, she Googled the words, “New York to Florida with a dog on a bike.”

An article popped up.

It was from a North Carolina newspaper, The Coastland Times. The headline read, “Outer Banks pit stop: Bicyclist and dog traveling from New York to Florida Keys take a breather." In a large photograph, a man stood beside a burgundy bicycle.

He smiled at a brown dog perched on a small trailer.

Oh my God, Hyman thought. That’s them.

She scanned the story. The man was 36-year-old Kristopher Cotton.

His dog was Ava.

Kris Cotton also had a Facebook page. Among his friends, Hyman spotted a woman with the same last name: Jenda Cotton.

To lose a son

More than 1,000 miles to the north, almost at the Canadian border, Jenda Cotton lived in Saranac Lake, a village in Upstate New York about 15 minutes outside of Lake Placid. It’s a world of snow-draped Adirondack mountains and sparkling lakes, population 5,000 — enough to warrant six stoplights.

Around 9 p.m., seven hours after the crash, Cotton was waiting for a friend to stop by. She had just arrived home after finishing work at a Subway, her second job.

From a window, she watched two New York state troopers approach her house.

She recognized them. A few hours earlier, she had made the two sandwiches at Subway. They'd seemed friendly.

In her doorway, they did not smile.

They wanted to discuss her son, Kristopher.

“Is he in jail?” she asked.

It was the best option she could imagine at the moment.

When they asked her to describe his tattoos, she knew.

Promises made

Kris loved adventure. He loved to motorcycle, jump from airplanes, bicycle across the country and snowboard in the Adirondacks, where he’d worked as an instructor.

He also loved Ava.

Seven years ago, while driving his motorcycle in Arizona, he’d found her in a box on the side of a road. When he picked her up, his hand curled around the tiny mound like a teacup’s saucer. He set her into his backpack and continued on.

She’d been his road dog since, sleeping in tents with him, racing alongside his bicycle, riding in her small trailer behind it — living life in the open air of adventure, every minute of it with him.

Cotton had last seen them in late May. Kris had just celebrated his 36th birthday that month, then waited for the weather to warm a little before heading to the East Coast Greenway, a 3,000-mile biking route along the Atlantic Coast.

On an especially beautiful day, they loaded Ava, the cart and a full camping backpack into Cotton’s car, then drove to the Vermont border.

Ava sat between Kris and his mother licking their faces. When they arrived at the drop-off spot, Cotton didn’t bother trying to talk Kris out of the adventure. But she did tease Ava that she still could stay home with her. 

As Kris pedaled toward a bridge at Lake Champlain, pulling Ava on her cart, Cotton called out through tears: If Ava needed anything, if she wanted to come home at any point, just let her know.

“Granny will come and get you!”

Sharing Ava

After the state troopers left, Charleston County Deputy Coroner Brittney Martin called Cotton to provide some basic details.

Then, the coroner texted Hyman: "She’s definitely interested in getting Ava back.”

Hyman's heart soared. So often when the animal society cares for pets injured in car wrecks or whose owners have died, nobody in the family takes them in. Or the staff can’t even find relatives to ask.

When Hyman spoke to the grieving mother, she filled her in about the dog’s condition. Ava had stayed at the emergency hospital for two days, then returned briefly to the animal society’s clinic. Now, she was living at Hyman’s house.

Hyman had fostered countless animals, including the now-famous Caitlyn the dog, whose owner clamped shut her muzzle with electrical tape. But she had never cared for one so soon after a trauma with such severe injuries.

Ava’s deepest wound, on her back, oozed heavily. Her side swelled. Because of her brain injury, veterinarians wanted to avoid the anesthesia required to do exploratory surgery, if possible. At one point, Ava pawed her staples out.

Each day, Hyman took Ava to work with her.

Each night, she FaceTimed with Cotton.

As they bonded, and Ava’s wounds began to heal, the women realized they shared so much else besides love for this dog. Both had long, graying hair and a penchant for the offbeat joys of life. Both drove orange cars. Hyman worked at the animal society; Cotton’s main job was at a veterinary office.

One day, Hyman said, “I’ll turn 61 in December.”

“I’ll turn 61 in December!” Cotton said.

“What day?”

They were born six days apart.

Yet, as the days passed, they faced a new question. Ava’s injuries were healing, but they remained severe.

How would they get her home? Saranac Lake was a 17-hour drive.

A helping plane

By day, Lee Richards runs his Charleston-based venture capital firm, Alerion Ventures. By night, he is a father and dog lover.

In early September, after he read a newspaper story about Kris’ death — and Ava’s survival — it struck him. He pondered the difficulty of getting the wounded pet back to her family, which likely would involve a multi-day car ride or a long day’s journey through airports and commercial flights. Saranac Lake isn’t exactly a hub.

Richards also is a longtime pilot who loves to travel with his own dog. And his firm owns a private jet.

He called the animal shelter and left a message.

Hyman quickly dialed him back.

First, they discussed flying Ava home alone. But Cotton and her daughter wanted to travel to Charleston. They needed to visit the place where Kris died. They wanted to collect his ashes, his bicycle, his backpack — whatever remained of him — in person. And they wanted to get Ava.

Richards texted Hyman a new plan. He would fly them all — Cotton, her daughter, Hyman and Ava — back to Saranac Lake together.

He texted her a picture of his own dog.

“My lab Rose.”

Bringing Kris home

Alone last Friday, Cotton set out into the unfamiliar city. She and her daughter, Jessica LaFever, had driven 17 hours straight from Upstate New York the day before, arriving at their North Charleston hotel around midnight. 

As LaFever slept, Cotton slipped out of their hotel room.

She wanted to collect her son's remains from the funeral home. She needed her boy back with her.

Cotton had never been to Charleston. A single mom with four kids, often working a waitressing job while raising them, that kind of travel wasn’t an option. The Spanish moss and blooming crepe myrtle trees outside of J. Henry Stuhr West Ashley Chapel left her awed.

Inside, a man led her to a room with mauve carpet and glowing lights. A dark wooden box, finely carved, sat on a small table with a cross between two lights that looked like candles.

Cotton lifted it. Kris felt heavier now than when he was born, she joked, because laughter kept her from collapsing in sorrow.

Her son's remains in the car with her, Cotton planned another stop. In the trunk, she carried a chest-high marker to place at the spot where Kris died.

When he was in school, he once made his mother a pack basket, a type of basket worn on the back, popular in the Adirondacks. Cotton had loved it. The marker had a small one made of birch bark from back home atop a model of a bicycle perched on an unadorned wooden post. It represented where Kris was from, things he loved.

Cotton drove back to the hotel to gather LaFever and find the place where her son’s adventures had ended.

Journey of friends

Cotton carried the wooden box into their hotel room and set it on a table.

On top of it, she placed a clear Ziploc bag with a red zipper and the Sharpied letters "GMA." The bag was about one-third filled with the ashes of Kris’ grandma, who died three years earlier. Cotton wanted to mix their remains and sprinkle them around the marker.

Yet, when she sat down, she felt as depleted as her daughter. LaFever and Kris were born 18 months apart. 

Instead of going to the crash site, mother and daughter lay in bed together scrolling through Facebook, reading people’s memories of Kris and piecing together his final journey. As he and Ava had cruised down the coast passing beaches, parks and cities including Washington, D.C., they had met people at every stop fascinated by this man and his dog.

Best as Cotton and LaFever could tell, the last person Kris communicated with was a guy he’d met in North Carolina. When Kris left there, riding a new burgundy Surly and pulling Ava in her usual cart, he'd told the man he planned to be back in eight weeks.

Around 11 a.m. on Aug. 31, Kris texted his new friend that Ava had eaten something and had a reaction. His bike had some kind of a leak.

“Not happy,” Kris typed.

Three hours later, he was dead.

Reuniting with Ava

The next day, when Cotton and LaFever pulled into the animal society's parking lot, TV trucks and cameras waited out front. Members of Charleston Moves, a bicycling advocacy group, brought thick bundles of white flowers for them to place at the crash site. Red lights on emergency vehicles flashed.

“I’m not sure I’m ready for this,” Cotton told her daughter.

“You’ve got to be ready.”

Mostly, however, she worried about Ava. She hadn’t seen her for three months. What if Ava didn’t remember her?

Once inside, the animal society’s CEO, Joe Elmore, gave them a tour of the medical suites where Ava and thousands of other animals received care. Cotton wondered how to thank this man. Ava’s care had easily topped $5,000, not to mention the gift of her life.

Soon, mother and daughter perched together on a wrought iron bench in front of the shelter, facing the cameras. A dozen first responders gathered to one side, including the deputy coroner who'd spoken to Cotton that first day. Charleston Moves members stood with their bicycles. Shelter staff slipped outside to watch.

Then, they all waited for Ava.

When Hyman led her out on a teal leash, they saw Ava's entire midsection was wrapped in a giant bandage, her head scraped up, a deep gash near one armpit, splays of other wounds all over body.

First, Ava strolled toward the journalists. Then, LaFever and Cotton called to her from the bench, "Ava, girl!"

Trotting over, she sniffed them and — whap! — her tail went wild. It could not possibly have wagged faster. The crowd cheered. Ava’s whole body wriggled. Her front paws landed in Cotton’s lap. She licked their faces.

“It’s Granny!” Cotton cried.

They stroked the soft brown fur that Kris had loved so dearly. Ava rubbed against them with such gusto that her bandage slipped down, revealing the reality of her wounds.

Cotton leaned over.

“I told you Granny would come get you.”

A deadly stretch

After the reunion, they could not delay going to the crash site any longer, or they'd run out of time. Cotton and LaFever decided to leave Ava at the shelter, just for a little while. She didn’t need to revisit that place.

They cruised down Savannah Highway leaving West Ashley, passing Ravenel, heading south toward Adams Run. The road stretched four lanes across, two in each direction, separated by a grassy median.

They passed a “Share the Road” sign.

They watched the road’s shoulder disappear.

Although 12 days had passed since Kris died, they didn't know many details about his last moments. They knew that a sheriff's office report said Kris had been riding along the right lane's white line when an 80-year-old attorney driving a SUV had hit them. The report called the SUV driver "the sole contributor" to the collision and said he was cited for driving too fast for conditions. It wasn't clear yet if he would face other charges.

Cotton wasn't sure exactly where the crash happened. When they reached the area, they drove around a bit, then stopped to ask a local man, who pointed them toward an orange restaurant. Inside Station 17 Local Grill, workers knew exactly where it happened — right across the highway.

They mentioned something else, too: The owner had a video of the crash. They'd give Cotton's number to him. 

Back across the highway, traffic whizzed by the women at such high speeds their car swayed. Cotton opened the trunk to retrieve the marker and some rebar to hold it. Arms filled with the white flowers, LaFever followed her to the edge of an expanse of mowed grass where it met a grove of trees.

An oak tree’s branches reached over them. A tall pine beside it smelled of home.

“It’s just so beautiful here,” Cotton said. “If he had to go, this is a beautiful spot.”

Behind them, a truck barreled by. LaFever turned to look, scowling.

“They’re flying.”

Grass crept to the edge of the right lane where Kris and Ava had been riding. There was no paved shoulder, no bike lane, although Charleston Moves had launched a petition to add a 4-foot one.

At the treeline, Cotton pounded in the rebar. With the marker assembled, the women stood quietly. In a black-and-white photo nailed to the front, Kris held Ava, who kissed his nose. LaFever set the flowers on the ground beneath it.

Then they left. Yet, while driving, they realized they'd forgotten to bring the ashes of Kris and his grandmother. It was all so overwhelming.

Cotton's phone rang. On the line, the restaurant owner introduced himself.

Moment of impact

As the man expressed his condolences, Cotton pulled into the grass again. She asked about the video.

“Just a little closure would be nice,” she explained. “They haven’t told us much, so this video would be the most that I have.”

He promised to send it. Cotton thanked him.

“Yes, ma’am. You guys be safe.”

By time they arrived at their hotel, the video waited in her inbox. Back in their room, they huddled over Cotton's cellphone and opened the link. It looked like security camera footage from the restaurant, the road visible at the very top of the image.

For 1 minute and 29 seconds, they watched light traffic pass. Then Kris appears on his bicycle, the trailer behind him, a speck on the small screen.

He rides in the right lane. A car passes in the left lane. Kris pedals past the mowed expanse of grass, then reaches the edge of the grove of trees. Just beyond the spot where his mother and sister just left the marker, a white SUV approaches him. 

In the video, no cars appear immediately beside or in front of the SUV. The driver does not appear to move into the left lane. Just before Kris pedals out of the camera’s view, the SUV overtakes him.

Its right side bounces up with impact.

Metal and wood erupt in a plume of destruction. Debris spews onto the highway and toward the trees.

“Now he’s down,” Cotton gasped. “It was the white car!”

LaFever covered her mouth. “Oh my god.”

The SUV drives out of view.

Kris is gone, too.

The trailer is gone.

Ava is gone.

Cotton paused the video and looked at her daughter.

“He didn’t even see it coming.”

A time for calm

Only one balm could soothe the pain of that video, and it was Ava. Hyman arrived at the hotel with the dog in the same car she'd driven that night to the emergency hospital.

This time, when Hyman opened the door, Ava hopped out, tail wagging. Her fresh bandages were wrapped in a grey ThunderShirt, which helped keep them compressed and in place.

In the hotel room, Ava flopped onto the cool carpet. Cotton rubbed her ear.

“God, I’m just so happy she’s back," she said. "It would have been so horrible if he had gotten her, too.”

Before Kris died, Ava would stretch out beside him inside their tent or wherever they stayed along their journeys together. Now, that tent, and the rest of his backpack, sat just inside the hotel room door, fresh from the coroner’s office. It still smelled of sweat and adventure. 

Cotton spread a white quilt from home across one of the room’s queen-sized beds, beckoning Ava to familiarity. Despite her wounds, she leaped onto the bed and plunked down. LaFever collapsed with her.

“You want to sleep with me?” she asked.

Cotton smoothed ointment onto Ava's back where the deepest wound still leaked.

“Actually, Jess, this looks really good.”

They peered at it.

“It’s deep though.”

Darkness draped the city beyond, letting the warm glow of a light beside the bed illuminate the room. Ava set her soft muzzle, with its broken jaw, onto the quilt. The wooden box with Kris’ ashes sat just feet away.

Majesty of home

On Sunday, 13 days after Kris died, Hyman's orange Subaru pulled into a hangar at Charleston Executive Airport on Johns Island. The two parts of Ava’s family, her old one and her new one, gawked at the gleaming white jet that would take them home.

Lee Richards, a tall man with a kind smile, walked up to introduce himself. His own dog, Rose, had just disembarked to go home with his wife and daughters.

“It’s a good day to fly. It was smooth up there.”

“Anything is better than driving back to New York,” Cotton said, smiling.

“Well, come on out.”

Ava pulled against the teal leash, heading for the jet, then bounded up the four steps to get inside. Hyman climbed into a seat facing LaFever and Cotton. Ava stood in the narrow aisle between them as Richards gave a safety talk about the aircraft, a Phenom 300.

“This is going to be exciting!” Cotton said.

She hadn’t flown since the 1970s.

LaFever had never flown. The wooden box was buckled into a seat behind her.

When the jet soared, the Cooper River on one side, Charleston Harbor on the other, clouds ringed the horizons of a blue sky, Cotton laughed with delight.

“Look at all those sailboats. They look like little dots!”

The aisle between them was only a foot wide, and soon Ava plopped down in it. Hyman draped a plush blanket over her. Sunlight warmed the dark auburn fur of her head.

“Oh, this dog," Hyman said. "I’m gonna miss her so much.”

“See why we had to come get her?” Cotton asked.

Conversation turned to Kris. Once the COVID-19 pandemic subsides, Cotton hoped to bring together all the people who met him along his journeys to share stories of meeting him and Ava. Maybe they could host a big cookout.

“A lot of people in the world live to be 100,” Hyman said, “but they don’t live the life he led.”

The flight took less than two hours, most of which Ava slept through. As the plane descended, heavy clouds shrouded the world below.

Richards turned around in the cockpit, “Ten minutes!’

Suddenly, the plane popped beneath the clouds.

“The mountains!” Cotton hollered. In all directions, the majesty of home.

LaFever pointed, “There’s the lake!”

The plane landed lightly on the wet runway. Ava stood, slipped from beneath the blanket and waited at the jet’s door. Once Richards lowered the stairs, she lumbered down them, back into the chilly winds of Upstate New York.

Cotton hurried off to retrieve her own orange car, a Honda Element. Her house waited just a few minutes away.

When Cotton returned, Hyman bent over.

“Bye, Ava,” she said.

The dog she helped to save looked at her with sad brown eyes. Then Ava turned away from her and walked to Cotton.

“She loves you,” Hyman said, tears welling. “And that’s good. That’s good!”

Yet Ava turned back around. She returned to Hyman, licking her face, rubbing against her. Cotton and Hyman hugged, too, mother to mother, spilling thanks and sworn promises to FaceTime often.

As Cotton led Ava toward the car, Hyman called out one last time: “The bandage is falling down again!” It was so hard to let go.