"If you knew Susie like I know Susie," goes the old song. And for those of us who know Susie Marucci, either as a real-world neighbor or as a cyber-neighbor on the Old Town listserve that she moderates, we certainly count ourselves lucky that we do.

So we all shared a sense of pleasure and pride when we learned that at the July 13 City Council meeting, Susie was recognized by the mayor and City Council as one of two "Outstanding Citizens of the Month."

City Council President Gayle Snyder presented the award to Susie for her contributions to her neighborhood, not the least of which is the Old Town listserve, which she started and moderates. In this busy, electronic age, Susie has succeeded in providing Old Town list participants (currently 83 members) with the computer equivalent of neighbors talking over the fence.

And it was on the list that we were first made aware of a recent incident where Susie went above and beyond in reuniting a little lost dog with its human family.

This year's holiday fireworks at Laurel Lakes, while another awesome display and enjoyable for most of us, was too much for one little white dog who slipped his collar and bolted from his family's viewing spot in the former Montgomery Ward's parking lot. Bently didn't stop running until he had miraculously crossed both directions of Route 198, and made it all the way to Carroll Avenue and Fourth Street where, lucky for him, Susie was watching the fireworks. When Susie finally stopped him and picked him up, she said his heart was beating so fast that "it felt like it might explode." She kept him overnight, and was able to reunite Bently with his missing family the next day.

That much we learned following Susie's "Lost Dog" thread on the listserve. But later, Susie's friend and neighbor Bonnie Oskvarek, channeling Paul Harvey, provided "the rest of the story."

Not only did Susie give Bently a safe place to bed down that night, she put up fliers around town the next morning, and took him to PetSmart to have the tag-less dog scanned for an under-the-skin microchip ID that some pets have, but Bently did not. She also had a vet trim his nails and treat an infected dewclaw, expenses for which she later refused recompense from Bently's humans, asking instead that they simply "pay it forward."

At the same time that morning, Bently's human family was hard at work trying to locate him. Even as he was passing out his own fliers and visiting the local pet stores (missing Susie at a PetCo by mere minutes), Fahim Hussain admits he had given up hope of finding Bently.

Fahim and his wife, Claudia, live in Beltsville with their daughter, Katherine, and son, Rayaan. This was the first time they had brought their 2-year-old Maltese with them to the fireworks display. For 6-year old Katherine, excitement over the aerial display vanished just as quickly, replaced by tears and the fear of never again seeing the little dog that slept with her each night.

In Fahim's frantic search the next morning, one of the people he approached had seen Susie's fliers, the description on which was simply "small white dog." When Fahim got in touch with Susie, and he mentioned Maltese, Susie knew that Bently had been found.

Fahim credits Bently's safe return to Susie's effort and the "pure luck" of the little dog somehow navigating the streets of Old Town safely at night to end up in her care.

I was one of Susie's cyber-neighbors until Monday, when I had the pleasure of meeting her, her sister Jenny Klueter, and their mother, Rosemary Marucci, at the Municipal Center. Her mom confirmed that Susie has long been a dog lover-rescuer, ever since she was 6 years old and brought home an English setter. Susie has also had a Fidos For Freedom dog, and has undergone Noah's Wish training for rescuing and sheltering animals in disasters.

So Bently was in good hands from the moment Susie scooped him up. And, I bet if he could, Bently would finish that old song by singing with the rest of us, "Oh, oh what a girl."

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