When Seuk Kim took off 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.
It was also his last.
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 final one. After apparently hitting turbulence, 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 four-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 due to 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.”
