On a crisp October evening near the Nome Airport, 13-year-old Usukcaq’s short legs fluttered across the tundra. She wore a bright pink coat over her sandy-colored fur to keep her warm and spottable, just in case she wandered too close to a herd of muskox looming on a bluff.
A year ago, the flat, boggy tundra of Kipnuk was all Usukcaq knew.
When ex-typhoon Halong hit in the fall of 2025, hundreds of people were evacuated in the largest airlift rescue in half a century. The most vulnerable people were evacuated first, like 91-year-old Catherine Dock, who had to be hoisted from her home by a helicopter.
“She was the oldest person in Kipnuk,” Catherine's granddaughter, Brenda Hagen, said. “It's just crazy, unreal, still unbelievable in a lot of ways too. It's a lot to process.”
Usukcaq shared a home with Hagen’s uncle, Oscar Dock, and Catherine. Her name means “nail” in Yup’ik. While Usukcaq was technically her uncle’s dog, she was loved by the entire family.
“Every time I went home, even though my Mom didn't want me to, I would go and get her, and sometimes sneak her to come and sleep in our house,” Hagen said.
Usukcaq wasn’t the only family pet left behind. Jesslyn Elliott is the executive director of the non-profit animal rescue Bethel Friends of Canines. She said that some evacuees tried to carry their pets in their one allowed bag, but first responders turned them away to prioritize people.
“We were getting bombarded with phone calls with people just really, really upset that there was nothing happening for their animals,” Elliott said.
Elliott said that as the evacuation unfolded less than 100 miles away, she fielded a call from an Elder that drove her to tears.
“It broke me,” Elliott said. “It was so hard to be like, ‘I don't know what to do.’”
The rescue launched a fundraiser for a charter flight, and within hours thousands of dollars streamed in. Elliott called Bethel-based pilot Nate DeHaan and booked a flight to Kipnuk.
“I think we ended up with 16 or 17 that first, just that first trip alone,” Elliott recalled.
In the two weeks after the storm, Elliott said that the rescue took in about 260 dogs from across the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. She posted pictures to the rescue’s Facebook page in hopes of reuniting the animals with their owners. Most went unclaimed, and were sent to Anchorage to start a new life.
But not Usukcaq. While scrolling Facebook, Hagen noticed Usukcaq’s unique polka-dot paws in the dark shadows of a kennel. She claimed Usukcaq immediately.
With so much uncertainty around where the family would go and whether Usukcaq could come, the family decided to send her to Nome to stay with Hagen. The pup hitched a ride with the Nome-Beltz High School wrestling team, which had just competed at a meet in Bethel.
Usukcaq has had to adapt to life in a foreign place, but Hagen said that it’s been a smooth transition so far.
“In Kipnuk there's no cars, there's no roads, there's no stuff like here,” Hagen said. “It's been fun to see her learn how to be in a car and stick her head out the window, jump out the window.”
Catherine died in December 2025 following complications from a fall she suffered while staying in temporary housing in Bethel. Hagen said that her spirit lives on through Usukcaq. “We feel like there's a piece of my Gram in our dog, and that's what my brother said,” she said. “[Usukcaq] always reminds us of her somehow.”
Hagen and Usukcaq returned to Kipnuk in August. Homes weren’t where they used to be. The tundra had been pushed and folded and her grandmother wasn’t there to greet her with a hug.
But when they returned to the family cabin 20 miles upriver, Hagen said that they found salmonberries growing even more abundantly than before the storm. Usukcaq ate them right off the tundra as fast as Hagen could pick them. They were back home.
