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Gina-Gina is a 6-year-old Belgian Malinois who works with her handler, Julie Guevara, at LaGuardia Airport.
She was named after Gina Sztejnberg, 52, of Ridgewood, who worked as a database architect consultant for Marsh & McLennan Cos. Inc. on the 96th floor of the North Tower.
Guevara has a special connection to that fateful day. She was among the New York Fire Department EMTs who responded, worked for several weeks afterward on the search and rescue effort, then served for months on the recovery team.
Guevara also was a city EMT when terrorists detonated explosives in a WTC parking garage in 1993.
“Gina is a lovable and hard-working dog who enjoys playing tug-of-war when she finds the training aid during training exercises,” she said of her four-legged partner. “Gina loves to be petted and especially loves getting petted on her rear end.”
The TSA has more than 1,000 explosives K-9 teams supporting travel security and screening nationwide. They're so good at what they do that other public and private sector law enforcement agencies often enlist them for high-level security work, said Lisa Farbstein, a spokesperson for the Transportation Security Administration.
Dozens of teams submitted entries for a spot on the calendar.
The first pooch right out of the box for January 2024 is Gina-Gina.
Miss January, who began her career at Kennedy Airport, loves sunning and chasing birds but really enjoys playing in the snow.
Hers is a poignant legacy.
Gina Sztejnberg (pronounced Steinberg) was born in Poland to a Jewish couple who'd previously fled to Russia to escape the Holocaust. She came to the U.S. in the early 1960s and attended Erasmus High School in Brooklyn.
There she renewed acquaintances with a boy from her village, Michael Sztejnberg. The couple married and had two daughters, Laurie and Julie.
Gina and Michael were inseparable traveling companions, even commuting together to work in the city, with Michael (a senior VP with JPMorgan Chase & Co) driving.
"I looked out the window and saw the papers flying," Michael Sztejnberg said at a memorial service at Temple Barnert in Franklin Lakes 12 days after the attacks. "When I heard that the plane hit the tower, I knew …"
CLICK HERE to Download the TSA 2024 monthly calendar
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