By Luis Perez
Newsday (New York)
Copyright 2006 Newsday, Inc.
A Kansas teenager and a Queens mother of a fallen 9/11 firefighter find themselves bonded by a tiny dog tag bearing the deceased’s name, age and engine company — but it may be nothing more than phony memorabilia sold on the Internet.
Cody Anschutz, 16, on a weekend trip to the Worlds of Fun Amusement Park in Riverside, Mo., found the rusty 1-inch by 2-inch trinket lying by an outdoor whirlpool tub at a Super 8 Motel.
The tags’ corners were rounded from wear, and their silvery coat appeared to be worn by fire and water, Anschutz said.
It read: “F.D.N.Y. FF Casoria, T. Engine 22, Badge 6259, Age 29.”
The military-style tag looked real enough to the high school junior, whose farthest venture east has been to Maryland.
“It was just laying there, clear as day,” said Anschutz, of Hays, Kan. “I said, ‘Maybe it’s from 9/11. Maybe this is from someone who died.’ ”
Anschutz took the trinket home, where a quick Internet search found that Firefighter Thomas Casoria, 29, of Whitestone, died in Tower One on Sept. 11, 2001.
“Let’s give it back,” Judy Anschutz recalled telling her son. Not without doubts about the trinket’s authenticity, she put it in the mail yesterday.
In Whitestone, the fallen firefighter’s mother, informed of the trinket’s existence by a reporter, was baffled.
“What is it doing in Kansas?” asked Judy Casoria, who knows badge No. 6259 by heart. “It sounds a little crazy.”
Casoria consulted with her son Carlo and a nephew, both city firefighters, who told her that dog tags are not part of the uniform. Firefighter Anthony Marden, Judy Casoria’s nephew, owns a keychain with his name and fire company, but the mother doesn’t believe her son owned such things.
Moreover, when Thomas Casoria’s remains were found, all of his belongings, from his helmet to his badge to the Maltese cross around his neck and some cash in his pocket, were recovered, Judy Casoria said.
Carlo Casoria went online and found, to the family’s disgust, imitation 9/11 dog tags, complete with firefighters’ and police officers’ names, companies and ages at death, selling for $3.
“A wave of unofficial trinkets and paraphernalia have appeared after 9/11,” said city Fire Department spokesman Jim Long, who noted that dog tags are “not a department-issued way of identifying someone.”
Cody Anschutz said: “That’s pretty lame, that somebody has to go make a fake dog tag of somebody who died on 9/11. It’s rude, it’s wrong.”
The Super 8 Motel in Riverside said a dog tag has not been reported missing.
Wanting to be certain that Cody Anschutz’s find was a fake, Judy Casoria awaited its arrival in the mail today.
Just weeks away from the fifth anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks, the mother’s wounds are still raw.
She recalled that a bracelet bearing her son’s name was picked out by chance by Olympic sledding champion Jimmy Shea during a special ceremony at the 2002 Winter Olympics.
Casoria’s family later met Shea at Ground Zero.
“That was a good luck charm for me, but now this is another thing,” Judy Casoria said.
A part of her wants to believe that the keepsake actually belonged to her son.
“Sure,” she said. “I want to.”