Hate the owner, NOT the breed.

By RICHARD COWEN and MATTHEW MALYSA
STAFF WRITERS

For more than a decade, a bushy-bearded drifter who the cops call “Polish Ted” has lived on the streets of Passaic with his dog, each dependent on the other.

The homeless man and his gentle pit bull friend have spent most of their days wandering Main Avenue, Ted wheeling his shopping cart, waving hello, accepting the occasional handout from locals. At night, man and dog take refuge under a pile of dirty blankets across the street from City Hall.

With no income and no family in the area, Ted and the dog, ironically named Killer, have survived mainly on food stamps and the kindness of strangers. But a stranger who visited in the middle of the night several weeks ago had other intentions.

Ted, whose real name is Tadeusz Zawistowski, said he was in his customary spot across from City Hall one night six weeks ago when evil struck. Asleep under his blanket with Killer chained next to him, a stranger arrived from out of the darkness and viciously beat the dog about the head, opening a gaping wound.  

“I was deep asleep and never heard the dog bark, never saw anything,” Ted recalled on Thursday, speaking in Polish to a Record reporter as he sat on a milk crate on Main Avenue. “When I woke up I saw blood all over the dog. I looked around, but I didn’t see anything. Whoever did this was gone.”

Judging by the size of the wound on Killer’s head, Ted believes the assailant must have used a pipe or a bat. He immediately grabbed the dog and headed to a local drugstore, where he got some iodine.

For days, Ted applied iodine every few hours to Killer’s head, staining the fur a deep amber. Back under the blanket, he cradled his pal’s head, keeping a lonely vigil and hoping the dog would pull through. He didn’t bother to go to the police station to report the incident.

“It wouldn’t have changed anything if I had gone to the police,” Ted said. “I didn’t see what happened. What was I going to tell them? Helping the dog was more important.”

Ted said he never thought of taking the dog to the hospital or abandoning him to die. “That dog is like a brother to me,” Ted said. “If he was going to die, I would rather that he did in the street.”

Luckily, word spreads quickly on the street. Lisa Galante of Wallington runs a dog grooming shop and has known Ted and Killer since they became partners. Lisa regularly brings food to them, especially when the weather gets cold, and she nearly fainted when she saw Killer for the first time after the attack.

“I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” Galante said. “I mean, who in the world would do such a thing?”

Galante scooped up the dog and took him to the Nutley Animal Hospital, where she whipped out her credit card. The hospital stitched the dog and closed the ugly wound on top of his head, then wrote prescriptions for antibiotics and anti-inflammatory drugs.

Since then, Galante has been visiting Ted and Killer four times a day to make sure the dog gets his medicine. Earlier this week, as the weather turned balmy and the streets got crowded once again, Galante offered the pooch a little TLC at his blanket, which had been moved to a doorway on Main Avenue.

“He’s getting better every day,” Galante said. “I can see it in his eyes. He’s beginning to look like his old self.”

As for the crime that was committed, Galante wants justice. “I just want the world to know that this happened, so that maybe somebody who saw something will contact the police.”

Detective Andy White, a Passaic police department spokesman, said it would have been better if Ted had alerted police immediately after the attack. White said police were looking for Ted on Thursday so they could talk to him.

“Everybody knows Polish Ted,” White said. “And Ted doesn’t bother anybody.”

Although a lot of people have seen him, few know who he is. Interviewed on Thursday, Ted let on that he was born in Racece, Poland, in 1947. He came to the United States in 1979, leaving  a wife and two sons behind in Poland, to live with relatives in Elmwood Park. He drove a tractor-trailer truck hauling garbage to landfills out of state.

He claims to have learned how to survive outdoors from his grandfather, who fought in the Polish Army against the Russians. He said his father was a Polish police officer who hated communism and was sent to prison for five years after the Russians took over the country.  

His grandfather taught him how to survive in the coldest climates, he said. His father taught him to distrust government and bureaucracy, he said.

“I learned from my father that if you go to a government office for help and they say ‘no,’ then you don’t go back again,” he said. “They spit on you and tell you it’s raining outside.”

Ted said he became homeless in 1998 after he got sick and couldn’t pay his doctor’s bill at Beth Israel Hospital in Passaic. “They said I had three months to live and here I am,” he said.

Email: cowenr@northjersey.com and  malysa@northjersey.com

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