“You’re an Angel!”

I had to pull over on Broadway this weekend, the main drag in our town. There was a little dog running all over the road.

My daughter Louisiana opened the passenger door. “Here, puppy,” she said, “come.” It was a good idea. The dogs we know love to go for rides and tend to jump in any car with an open door.

No luck with this runaway. And then I noticed the tall, dark-haired guy calling to the dog from up the street. “That’s James!” I said. He was a neighbor—and the son of Fulton Oursler, the beloved founding editor of Angels on Earth magazine.

Louisiana and I got out of the car. By this time, at least three other drivers had stopped to help, passersby squatted in strategic spots on the sidewalk, people darted about in the middle of the street, all of us trying desperately to catch the errant doggie. Finally she headed right for me. “Good puppy dog,” I said, and scooped her up.

We gave James and his new charge a ride home to the Ourslers’. “We almost lost her,” James said when his girlfriend came out. “She just shot out the door.”

The girlfriend looked at me. We hadn’t met, but she gave me a big warm hug like we were old friends. “Thanks so much,” she said. “You’re an angel!”

I corrected her of course, when I told her who I was and how I got to know the Ourslers and eventually became editor-in-chief of Angels on Earth. I’m an angel editor, to be precise, hardly an angel! But for a brief second, when she said it, I did feel a little bit like one. And that just made my day.