Kimberly Dozier

Kimberly Dozier (born July 6, 1966) is a reporter and correspondent for CBS News. She was stationed in Baghdad as the chief reporter in Iraq for CBS News for nearly three years prior to being critically wounded on May 29, 2006.

Biography

Dozier was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, United States, North America, and raised by Benjamin and Dorothy Dozier. Ben Dozier is a retired construction engineer, and retired Marine who served in World War II. Dorothy Dozier was a homemaker who raised six children. She passed away August 2008.

Dozier attended St. Timothy's School (an all-girls boarding school) in Stevenson, Maryland. She holds a bachelor's degree from Wellesley College (1987) and a master's degree in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia (1993).

From 1988 through 1991, Dozier served as a Washington, D.C.-based reporter for The Energy Daily, New Technology Week, and Environment Week, covering Congressional policy and industry regulation.

From 1992 through 1995, while living in Cairo, Dozier did freelance work for the CBS Radio Network, Christian Science Monitor Radio, and Voice of America, as well as writing for The Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle.

From 1996 through 1998, Dozier was an anchor for BBC Radio World Service's "World Update", an hour-long, live foreign affairs broadcast, among other programs.

Also from 1996 through 2002, Dozier served as the London bureau chief and chief European correspondent for CBS Radio News and as a reporter for CBS News television. Her assignments included the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, the crisis and refugee exodus in the Balkans, Vladimir Putin's election, the death of Princess Diana, Northern Ireland's peace process and the Khobar barracks bombing in Dhahran. Dozier has interviewed dozens of newsmakers, including U.S. Gen. David Petraeus, Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice, Gerry Adams and Yasser Arafat. In addition to her work for CBS Radio News, she also reported for the CBS Evening News, CBS Evening News weekend editions, The Early Show, and the CBS Network's 24-hour news service.

From February 2002 through August 2003, Dozier was the chief correspondent for WCBS-TV New York's Middle East bureau in Jerusalem, where she covered the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the war in Iraq, before being reassigned to Baghdad.

In April 2008 Dozier received a Peabody award for "CBS News Sunday Morning: The Way Home", a piece in which she reported the story of two women veterans who lost limbs in Iraq.

Dozier is also the recipient of a 2008 RTNDA/Edward R. Murrow Award for Feature Reporting for the same story. She has also received three American Women in Radio and Television (AWRT) Gracie Awards - in 2000, 2001 and 2002 - for her radio reports on Mideast violence, Kosovo and the Afghan war, as well as the organization's Grand Gracie Award in 2007 for her body of work in Iraq.

Dozier and ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff were honored with the 2007 Radio and Television News Directors Association and Foundation's Leonard Zeidenberg First Amendment Award. She was honored by the Overseas Press Club in 2007 and spoke on behalf of journalists who have been killed and injured in Iraq. In 2008, Dozier became the first woman to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation's Reagan "Tex" McCrary's Award for Excellence in Journalism.

Injury in Iraq

Dozier was seriously injured in Iraq on May 29, 2006 in a car bomb attack that killed an American soldier, the 4th ID's Captain James "Alex" Funkhouser, an Iraqi translator, and CBS crewmembers Paul Douglas (Cameraman) and James Brolan (Sound Technician). She was transferred to Germany for further treatment.

Most of the patrol was outside their parked Humvees in a residential Baghdad neighborhood. Insurgents waited until the patrol approached the car bomb, packed with an estimated five-hundred pounds of explosives, before remotely detonating it. The captain, translator and CBS crew were closest to the explosion.

Dozier underwent more than two dozen major surgeries in the two months following the bombing on May 29, 2006. Doctors removed shrapnel from her head, and rebuilt her shattered femurs, and applied skin grafts to the extensive burns on both legs. Dozier was first treated at the Baghdad Combat Support Hospital, and the medical facility at Balad, Iraq, before being medevacked to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, which is the U.S. military's largest overseas hospital.

Although she was unable to speak due to a respirator, she was able to write to communicate; the first question she asked was about the crew.

On June 7, 2006, she returned to the United States for further treatment at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, MD, outside Washington, D.C.

Coincidentally, in April 2004, Dozier had been featured in a USA Today article on the safety of journalists covering the Iraq War. On the CBS Evening News the day of the event, Bob Schieffer reported that the news crew was working on a story of which the subject was how Memorial Day "is like any other day" in Iraq.

Dozier has fully recovered from her injuries. She ran the 10K of the 2008 U.S. Marine Corps Marathon to raise money for Fisher House, which provides a place to stay for loved ones of the combat-injured.

Book

Dozier wrote a book, Breathing the Fire, Fighting to Report-and Survive-the War in Iraq, which chronicles both her physical and emotional recovery from the IED explosion on Memorial Day 2006 in Iraq. Breathing the Fire was published in May 2008. In the book, Dozier pieces together her own memories of the explosion and recovery with reports from her doctors, nurses, family members and even rescuers about her condition. Dozier presents an account of what it is like to report in a war zone, feel the pain and guilt of losing her friends and co-workers and to make the transformation from technically dead to walking without a limp. Notable authors and reporters have given the book rave reviews including Dan Rather, Lee Woodruff, Leslie Stahl, David Martin and Walter Cronkite.