And, every night, she has relived the attack that "seemed like forever."
"I've been waking up fighting," she said. "I've been hurting myself because I've been fighting (the dog) off so hard. I really thought that was it for me at one point in the back of the Jeep."
Johnson was delivering mail in an unincorporated area of Broward County near Pembroke Park July 10 when a pit bull and a mixed-breed German shepherd jumped into her Jeep. Both dogs belong to Lynn Thompson and Mike Thompson of 5619 SW 38th St.
The pit bull, Bam-Bam, bit Johnson nearly 50 times, leaving her with deep gashes in her right arm and leg and bite marks on her other leg and arm. The right arm remains bandaged.
The dogs remain at Broward County Animal Control. Both are under a police hold, said Larry Atwell, assistant director of Animal Control.
In her 12 years of working for the U.S. Postal Service, Johnson said, she has been chased by many a dog. "But this was my first dog bite," she said.
On Friday, Johnson filed a $5 million lawsuit against the Thompsons. She claimed they should have restrained their pets and that she suffered permanent damage as a result of the attack.
The attack started just after Johnson put mail in the Thompsons' mailbox, which is just outside a chain-link fence that surrounds the house.
"Like usual, I drove up and I saw the dogs doing like they always do, barking and jumping on the fence," Johnson said. "I always make sure the fence is closed.
"I put the mail in the box and turned to check on my next delivery. I heard this noise and both dogs were jumping into the Jeep.
"They start started attacking me. I screamed and hollered. But no one helped me."
She saw one of the neighbors standing in his yard watching the attack. She screamed and begged him for help.
"But he said, 'That's not my dog,'" Johnson recalled.
At some point during the struggle inside the Jeep, one of the dogs knocked the gear shift, jolting the Jeep forward. The movement closed off the window on the driver's side when it came to rest against the Thompson's fence, Johnson said.
"All I could think of was, 'I've got to get out of this Jeep or else he's going to kill me,'" she said.
She tried to get Bam-Bam away from her by grabbing onto his neck chain, setting her hopes of escape on the window on the other side of the Jeep.
"I figured somebody would come by and try to help me -- throw a rock or something," she said.
No one did.
Once outside, she threw dirt in Bam-Bam's face. That didn't do the trick.
"Then I saw the fire truck, and I said, 'Thank God, I'm going to get help,'" she recalled. "But I guess they were afraid of the dog because they didn't get out of the truck."
Finally, after "what seemed like forever," Broward Sheriff`s Office Deputy Debbie Cox drove up and turned the siren on. Bam-Bam released his grip, and Cox pulled her police car between Johnson and the dog, allowing Johnson to climb in and be rushed to the hospital.
Johnson said she expects to get out of the hospital in a few days. Then she will wait for the pain to subside and the clearance from her doctor to return to work -- to the very same route she has been doing for six years.
"Even if I went to another route, there'd still be dogs," she said.
(Sun Sentinel - July 16, 1985)