Tourist says interview
helped save Hok Get

His comments to a TV reporter
launched the rescue efforts, he says

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Associated Press

TULSA, Okla. >> An Oklahoma man says his innocent comment to a Honolulu television reporter launched a $48,000 effort to save a dog from an abandoned fuel tanker.

The rescue effort ended Thursday with Hok Get's arrival in Honolulu after several weeks adrift.

"I guess I had a lot to do with starting this whole thing," said Mason Matheny of Bixby.

"Someone probably would have said something eventually. I just happened to be the one who opened my big mouth first."

Matheny and his wife, Judy, were passengers on the cruise ship Norwegian Star when it stopped southwest of Hawaii to rescue 11 crew members of an Indonesian tanker.

The Insiko 1907 had been adrift since March 13 when an engine room fire killed a crewman and knocked out its power.

"It looked like a ghost ship," Judy Matheny said. "It was kind of eerie."

Matheny could not see anybody on deck but could hear the faint barking of a dog.

When the Norwegian Star's captain announced the rescue over the ship's intercom, he said there also had been a dog aboard but that it had to be left behind because of Hawaii's quarantine regulations.

Norwegian Cruise Line officials contend the Norwegian Star's captain and crew were never aware there was a dog aboard the Insiko.

"Had the (Norwegian Cruise Line) captain been aware, the dog would have been safely transported onto the Norwegian Star," a statement from the company said days after the rescue.

When the cruise ship docked at Maui, reporters were there to ask about the rescue. Matheny told a reporter to ask authorities about the dog and gave an account of what the captain had announced.

"I didn't think anything else about it," said Matheny, an oil field chemical worker. "I just got back on the cruise ship and continued to enjoy my vacation."

The ship returned to Honolulu a week later, and Matheny learned the drifting dog, a 2-year-old terrier mix, had become a world news story.

"(The reporter) called me and said that the station's switchboard lit up when they played my mention of the dog," he said. "No one cared about the body that was left behind. They just wanted to know what was going to happen to the dog."

The Hawaiian Humane Society launched a $48,000 effort to find the tanker and rescue Hok Get, formerly known as Forgea.

A large celebration was held Thursday for the dog. One dog food maker has promised her a lifetime supply.

The dog faces 120 days in quarantine on Kauai.