Boy Who Was Mauled Saving Friends Now Faces Cruel Taunts

`I DON'T FEEL LIKE I'M ANY DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHER KIDS, BUT WHEN I LOOK IN THE MIRROR, I SEE I'M DIFFERENT FROM EVERYBODY ELSE. PEOPLE ARE PERFECT HERE. I'M NOT.'

CHAGRIN FALLS, Ohio - There was a time when Joey Jacobs was a hero everywhere he went.

Total strangers would come up to the 9-year-old with no left ear and a scarlet face full of raw, jagged scars and tell him how brave he was, how much they admired him for rescuing two friends from an attacking Rottweiler.

That was three years and eight reconstructive surgeries ago.

Before the synthetic ear, transplanted with hope and hoopla, had to be removed because of complications.

Before the little boy with the impish grin had stretched into the lanky kid on the brink of adolescence.

Before he moved from his supportive elementary school in Chester Township, Geauga County, Ohio, where the kids knew his story and admired his courage, to a middle school in Chagrin Falls, where taunting classmates call him "dogface" and "earboy."

Joey, who turns 13 next month, says he doesn't feel much like a hero anymore. Every time he leaves his home, he is confronted with a jarring truth: In the eyes of almost everyone else, he doesn't fit in. His face remains criss-crossed in raised, pink stripes, and when he turns full face, which is rare, his missing ear renders him asymmetrical.

He waves off any suggestion that his eyes are beautiful, that his smile is endearing. Strangers stare, he says, and little kids point. At Chagrin Falls Middle School, some have resorted to outright ridicule.

"I don't feel like I'm any different from the other kids, but when I look in the mirror, I see I'm different from everybody else," Joey says. "People are perfect here. I'm not. Some of the boys will say things like, `Hey, Joey, you left your ear back there!' Day after day after day they do it, and sometimes they go a little too far. Then I lose it. I end up in a fight."

Joey was a third-grader in December 1993 when the dog bolted from electronic fencing and lunged for him and his friends, who were playing in nearby woods.

He distracted the dog so his friends could escape, but then the Rottweiler turned on Joey. The animal bit off his left ear and part of his right, dragged him 127 feet through the snow and chewed his face beyond recognition.

By the time the dog's owner found Joey, he was propped up against a tree, motionless but still conscious. From a distance, she thought he was wearing a red hat. As she ran closer, she realized the red blur was his face.

Hundreds contacted him

Hundreds of strangers mailed Joey cards, letters and gifts, including a dark-green beret sent by Sgt. 1st Class Rod Knight of the 7th Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg, N.C.

"If I ever find myself lacking the strength or courage to go on," wrote Knight, "I will remember your story and overcome. And if anyone ever asks me who my hero is, I can tell them: a man named Joey Jacobs."

Such support bolstered Joey's spirits, but he says he never felt he was a hero. "They say I was heroic when I told my friends to go into the house while I stayed with the dog, but it just seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I don't regret doing it. I'd do it again, because I still think it was the right thing to do."

He also feels that his mother, Kathy Carroll, 33, is the true hero. "My mother has gone through as much pain as I have, but nobody knows it," says Joey as tears fill his mother's eyes. "I wish my family wouldn't have to go through all this. I feel sorry for that."

Since the attack, Carroll and Joey's stepfather, John Storaasli, have divorced. She has since moved Joey and his brother, John, 5, to Chagrin Falls. She is visibly calmer than in the first months after the attack, when she carried around Joey's school photo to show everyone what he looked like before and talked hopefully about surgery that would restore his face.

`This is Joey now'

"This is Joey now," she says, smiling. "This is what he looks like. The other Joey is gone, and we have to deal with him as he is today. At his other school, everyone was so kind and supportive because they had gone through it all with him. I know kids can be cruel, but it's very hard to see his anger, all his hurt, when he comes home from school now."

Matt Sanders, Joey's best friend and classmate, says he feels pain watching his friend suffer.

"I feel hurt right along with him, because he gets made fun of all the time and he tells me a lot of things. They call him `no-ear' and `dogface' - the kids have no respect. If one popular kid says he hates Joey, then the whole class will. Girls will be his friend because he's funny, but they won't, you know, like him, because they're afraid their friends will make fun of them."

School principal John Richard is aware Joey had experienced some "adjustment problems" but not that he had been regularly taunted.

More than anything, Joey just wants to look like everyone else. He talks excitedly about the possibility of an artificial ear down the road, and he discusses at length a Boston doctor who has succeeded in growing human ears - made from human cartilage - on the backs of rats.

Carroll says she has been in touch with the doctor, who has yet to transplant one of these ears onto a human.

Joey is a reflective, soft-spoken boy who shrugs his shoulders when first asked if he likes girls, then admits he does but doubts they will ever like him. He wants to be a fighter pilot, although many caution him against stoking such dreams.

Joey says he has "lots of problems, lots of worries." He loves playing football, but the helmet makes his ear bleed. He is a star swimmer on the recreation department's swim team but suffers constant earaches from the water. And he wonders what is up ahead.

`I worry about the future'

"I worry about the future, like will I be able to get a job in a couple of years like most kids? I'm afraid no one will hire me because of the way I look."

Despite the hardships, Joey remains philosophical about why he was the one whose life was so dramatically altered that winter day.

"I think what happened was supposed to happen, and you have to accept it. When you make a mistake, you're supposed to learn from it. I have to move on; I have to take each day as it is."

As if offering proof of his acceptance, Joey grins and points to the house next door. There, sitting in the neighbors' fenced yard, is a big, black Rottweiler. "It doesn't really bother me," Joey says. "It bothers Mom, though. It brings back memories."