NEW YORK (AP) — When Seuk Kim took off from Maryland last weekend with three small dogs aboard his plane, it was the latest of many volunteer flights he had made to rescue animals in need.
After realizing a childhood dream of becoming a pilot, Kim transported cats and dogs from disaster areas, overcrowded shelters and other misfortunes — including a dog trapped for days in a shipping container — to rescue groups. He lined up other aviators to do the same.
But Sunday's flight to New York was his last. Kim's 1986 Mooney M20J crashed in the snowy woods of the Catskill Mountains, killing the 49-year-old pilot and one of the dogs, authorities said. The other two pups survived and were recovering Tuesday.
“There are very few people like Seuk in this world. He has no ulterior motives. He never needed recognition,” said Sydney Galley, a fellow rescue flight volunteer. “He just wanted to help.”
Whiskey — a 4-month-old Labrador-mix puppy who was found huddled in the snow with two broken legs — was doing well while awaiting surgery at Pieper Memorial Veterinary emergency and specialty hospital in Middletown, Connecticut. Videos showed the tawny pup getting belly rubs, licking a staffer’s face and, later, calmly looking around while having a leg bandage changed.
The other surviving dog, an 18-month-old Yorkshire terrier mix called Pluto, was found Monday with minor injuries. By Tuesday, Pluto was at the Animal Shelter of Schoharie Valley, the New York organization that had been set to receive all three dogs. The third was a five-pound (2.3-kg) puppy named Lisa, Galley said.
The Federal Aviation Administration said Tuesday that the aircraft crashed under unknown circumstances in mountainous terrain. National Transportation Safety Board investigators were at the crash site.
Greene County Sheriff Peter Kusminsky has said visibility was poor Sunday and that Kim sought permission to change his altitude because of turbulence before the plane went down in early evening.
Galley said the aircraft — Kim's third plane, purchased in recent months — was equipped with technology to help locate it in an emergency. Still, it took authorities until about midnight Sunday to find the aircraft, which was in about a foot of snow a couple of miles from the nearest road, the sheriff said.
Kim lived with his wife and their three children in Springfield, Virginia. Originally from South Korea, he “came to this country with little but a dream, and through hard work and perseverance, he built a life of meaning and generosity,” cousin Christine Kim said in a Facebook message.
“Witty, spontaneous, and full of boundless generosity,” he combined a caring heart with a sense of adventure, the Kim family said in an online obituary.
Seuk Kim had worked in fields including public relations and marketing. His family said he had pastimes including cooking and following baseball, but he had long aspired to fly.
He eventually made that wish come true, and Galley said he recently told friends that he had landed a job with a charter flight company.
“He was on top of the world,” she said.
Kim started flying rescue dogs about four years ago and became a dedicated volunteer who handled as many as three flights a week and helped line up other pilots, Galley said. Unfazed by huge dogs, cats that other pilots didn't want to fly, or animal potty accidents, he responded to virtually any request with a smile and “sure, I can do that,” she recalled.
Earlier this year, he flew “Connie the container dog,” the canine found in a shipping container at the Port of Houston, according to Galley and to a post on his memorial website.
After Hurricane Helene struck parts of the Southeast this fall, Kim helped fly planeloads of generators and other supplies to hard-hit western North Carolina and even bought a pickup truck to drive in hay for farms, Galley recalled.
Penny Edwards of Forever Changed Animal Rescue, one of the groups Kim helped with Helene response, called him “a huge asset to not just us but the entire rescue community.”
“Our hearts are shattered,” she wrote in an email Tuesday.
Maggie Jackman Pryor, the Animal Shelter of Schoharie Valley’s executive director, said Kim helped save hundreds of animals over the years.
Among them were a dog and her five puppies that he flew in October to Cathy West of Kuddles & Kisses K9 Rescue in Baltimore. The mixed-breed dog had been on a list to be euthanized at an overfilled shelter in Tennessee, West said.
“He was so involved in trying to get the word out to volunteer, to other pilots — that this is a good thing to save these dogs so that they don’t die in shelters,” she said.
On Sunday, Galley said, Kim picked up four dogs at a Virginia airport where her husband had just transported them from Georgia. After excitedly telling her husband about his new charter-plane job, Kim took off, dropped a big dog at a small airport in Maryland, and headed on with the rest toward Albany, New York.
She imagines that he apologized to his canine passengers as the plane went down.
“He always,” she said, “put everybody ahead of himself.”
Associated Press writer Cedar Attansio contributed.
Veterinarian Stephanie Boisvert holds Whiskey, a Labrador-mix puppy, at the Pieper Memorial Veterinary Center, Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2024, in Middletown, Conn. Whiskey survived a plane crash in the Catskill Mountains on Sunday. (Jesse Ferguson, Pieper Memorial Veterinary Center via AP)
After surviving a plane crash in the Catskill Mountains on Sunday, Whiskey, a Labrador-mix puppy, rests at the Pieper Memorial Veterinary Center, Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2024, in Middletown, Conn. (Jesse Ferguson, Pieper Memorial Veterinary Center via AP)
After surviving a plane crash in the Catskill Mountains on Sunday, Whiskey, a Labrador-mix puppy, rests at the Pieper Memorial Veterinary Center, Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2024, in Middletown, Conn. (Jesse Ferguson, Pieper Memorial Veterinary Center via AP)
This photo released by The Animal Shelter of Schoharie Valley shows Seuk Kim during a flight to deliver dogs rescued from a euthanasia list to the Animal Shelter of Schoharie County on Nov. 11, 2024. (Animal Shelter of Schoharie Valley via AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration kept President-elect Donald Trump's incoming administration closely apprised of its efforts to broker the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hezbollah that is slated to go into effect early Wednesday, according to the outgoing Democratic administration.
Trump’s team, meanwhile, was quick to spike the football and claim credit for the rare spot of good news for a Democratic administration that's been dragged down by the grinding Mideast conflict.
“Everyone is coming to the table because of President Trump,” Florida Rep. Mike Waltz, Trump’s choice for his national security adviser, said in a post on X on Tuesday, shortly before the Israel Cabinet signed off on the agreement. “His resounding victory sent a clear message to the rest of the world that chaos won’t be tolerated. I’m glad to see concrete steps towards deescalation in the Middle East.”
The Biden administration's reported coordination with Trump's team on its efforts to forge the ceasefire in Lebanon is perhaps the highest-profile example of cooperation in what's been a sometimes choppy transition period.
Trump's transition team just on Tuesday reached a required agreement with President Joe Biden’s White House that will allow transition staff to coordinate with the existing federal workforce before Trump takes office on Jan. 20. There has been some coordination on high levels between the outgoing Biden and incoming Trump teams, including talks between Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Waltz.
Biden in Rose Garden remarks on Tuesday cheered the ceasefire agreement as a critical step that he hoped could be the catalyst for a broader peace in the Mideast, which has been shaken by nearly 14 months of war following Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
“This is designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities," Biden said. "What is left of Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations will not be allowed — I emphasize, will not be allowed — to threaten the security of Israel again.”
White House officials are now hopeful that a calm in Lebanon will reinvigorate a multi-country effort at finding an endgame to the devastating war in Gaza, where Hamas is still holding dozens of hostages and the conflict is more intractable.
Biden said the U.S., as well as Israel, will engage in talks in the coming days with officials from Egypt, Qatar and Turkey to try to get Gaza talks back on track.
But during Biden's moment of success in a conflict that has roiled his reputation at home and abroad, the specter of the incoming Trump administration loomed large.
Trump’s senior national security team was briefed by the Biden administration as negotiations unfolded and finally came to a conclusion on Tuesday, according to a senior Biden administration official. The official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity on a call organized by the White House, added that the incoming Trump administration officials were not directly involved in the talks, but that it was important that they knew “what we were negotiating and what the commitments were."
Trump's team and allies, meanwhile, said there was no doubt that the prospect of the Republican president returning to power pushed both sides to get the agreement done.
Waltz, in addition to giving Trump credit for the ceasefire deal coming together, added a warning to Iran, Hezbollah's chief financial backer.
“But let’s be clear: The Iran Regime is the root cause of the chaos & terror that has been unleashed across the region. We will not tolerate the status quo of their support for terrorism," Waltz said in his post.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, also gave a shoutout to the incoming administration, while giving a nod to Biden's team.
“I appreciate the hard work of the Biden Administration, supported by President Trump, to make this ceasefire a reality,” Graham said in a statement.
Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Washington group Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said the moment magnifies that Iran — which he said would have needed to approve of Hezbollah agreeing to the ceasefire — is carefully weighing what lays ahead with Trump.
"There’s zero doubt that Iran is pulling back to regroup ahead of Trump coming into office," said Goldberg, a National Security Council official in Trump's first administration. “It’s a combination of Israeli military success and Trump’s election — the ayatollah has no clothes and he knows we know.”
The Biden White House is also holding on to a sliver of hope that the Lebanon ceasefire deal could help reinvigorate a long sought after Israel-Saudi normalization deal.
The official said a “lot of work has been done” to get such an agreement on track “but clearly where we are in Gaza is holding us back.”
Biden has said his administration was tantalizingly close to reaching a deal between the Middle East’s two most important powers shortly before the Hamas attack sent tremors throughout the region. He has speculated that the emerging normalization deal was part of Hamas’ motivation in carrying out its attack on Israel when it did.
Just weeks before the attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sat beside Biden on the sidelines of the annual U.N. General Assembly and marveled that a “historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia” seemed within reach — a diplomatic advance that the Israeli leader predicted could lead to lasting peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.
The so-called normalization push, which began during Trump’s first administration and was branded the Abraham Accords, is an ambitious effort to reshape the region and boost Israel’s standing.
The Biden White House plans to keep the incoming Trump administration looped in on its efforts and “anything that we will do on this ... we won’t do this unless they know what we’re doing," the Biden administration official said.
Associated Press writers Fatima Hussein in West Palm Beach, Florida, and Zeke Miller and Chris Megerian contributed reporting.
President Joe Biden walking out to speak at a news conference in the Rose Garden at the White House, Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
President Joe Biden speaks in the Rose Garden at the White House, Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
