Ann Musser Ozzie Ercan and dog

Ann Musser and husband Ozzie Ercan pose with Pumpkin the dog at their Holyoke home. Musser, who has advanced cancer, was arrested Friday night on a warrant issued after she failed to renew Pumpkin's dog license with the City of Holyoke.

(Patrick Johnson / The Republican)

FOLLOW-UP: Called to court over a dog license: What would your town do? »

HOLYOKE — Up until the time police put her in handcuffs and loaded her into a cruiser, Ann Musser was not expecting to be arrested.

“I just wished that at least for my first time getting arrested, I had something interesting to say about what I had done wrong,” said Musser, a Holyoke resident.

Musser was arrested at her home Friday night on an outstanding arrest warrant issued by Holyoke District Court for failing to appear in court. The court appearance was scheduled last September because Musser had failed to comply with repeated requests from the city of Holyoke in June for her to renew the license for Pumpkin, her 14-year-old family dog.

Musser, 41, admits failing to pay the $5 renewal fee was an oversight on her part, but she had a lot on her mind at the time. The main thing was the diagnosis for advanced ovarian cancer and having to undergo major surgery.

“Your priorities are a little different when you are fighting death,” said her husband, Ozzie Ercan. “It’s easy to lose track of how important those little pieces of paper are.”

Musser is the second person arrested in recent weeks over failure to pay a dog license.

The Daily Hampshire Gazette reported last week that Sylvia Buzzell, of Turners Falls, was arrested March 8 on a warrant issued out of Belchertown, where she used to live. Like Musser, Buzzell failed to renew her dog license and then failed to show when summonsed to appear in court. In each case, an arrest warrant was issued.

Holyoke City Clerk Brenna McGee said Tuesday that, strictly speaking, Musser was not arrested for failing to renew her dog license. The warrant was issued because Musser was ordered to appear before a judge but never showed, McGee said.

“It has nothing to do with the dog license. It has nothing to do with a city ordinance,” McGee said. By failing to appear, Musser was in violation of state law, she said.

In Holyoke, dog licenses must be renewed annually. Each year, some 300 of the city’s 3,400 registered dog owners are tardy with their payment and must be sent reminder notices.

McGee said her office sends out three late notices, requesting payment within 21 days. When the 21 days are over, the matter gets forwarded to District Court. Dog owners are summonsed to appear in court, and if they fail to show, the courts issue an arrest warrant.

From the time the first reminder about the dog fee was mailed out, until the time the warrant was issued, Musser should have received seven separate notices in the mail, McGee said.

Musser did come to the clerk’s office to pay the $5 renewal and $25 late fee on Sept. 13, McGee said. But by then a warrant had already been issued by the courts for her arrest.

Paying the late fee, McGee said, “doesn’t make the warrant go away.

"We have nothing to do with that. Once a warrant is issued, it is out of our hands.”

Musser and Ercan say the story is not about their dog license renewal, either. Instead, they say, it is about someone with a life-threatening illness coming face to face with an indifferent and unyielding government bureaucracy.

Musser said she attempted to go to the courts in September to take care of the warrant, but felt the process she was required to go through was literally putting her life in jeopardy.

She said she is at a stage in her treatment where she is neutropenic, or has a very low white blood cell count. White blood cells are the body’s means of fighting off infection. Having a low count means Musser is continually exposed to becoming sick.

Her doctors have warned her that just being in an ordinary crowd puts her in danger of any number of possible airborne viruses. “I don’t even go to the movies any more,” she said.

But to take care of the warrant, she was told she had to wait in a crowded courtroom until she was called up before the judge. She said she repeatedly told the clerks, bailiffs and court staff about her medical condition and how being in the courtroom was potentially harmful to her health.

She said her protests fell on deaf ears, so she left after waiting for three hours.

“I knew I was taking a risk, but I had paid my fee and the late fee,” she said. “I didn’t know what else to do, so I left, knowing that it could come back to bite me – and it did.”

The bite came Friday evening at about 9:30, when her husband suddenly had a craving for ice cream.

He hopped in the car to go to the corner store, but forgot his wallet with his driver’s license. On the way back, he noticed a state trooper following him and, just before he was about to turn into his driveway, he was pulled over, he said.

The trooper allowed him to go into his house to get his license, but because the car was registered in Musser’s name, he wanted to see her license, too, Ercan said.

And once the trooper ran Musser's license through the computer, it notified him that she was the subject of an arrest warrant.

“They came back and said ‘We’re going to have to arrest you,’” she said.

Prior to the arrest, she had spent the week laid up in the house with bronchitis and a high fever. “I hadn’t left the house in days because I was so sick.”

She said she and her husband tried to explain about her medical condition and how she was vulnerable to infection."They said, 'There's nothing we can do. Sorry, we're going to have to arrest you.' "

The troopers allowed her the opportunity to make sure her children were not watching, then they handcuffed her and put her in the back of a cruiser. “By that time, I started crying,” she said.

“I was in shock. That was the last thing I expected,” Ercan said.

She was booked at the state police barracks in Northampton and then transferred to the Hampshire County House of Correction until her husband bailed her out 4 ½ hours later.

If she thought the crowded courtroom was a threat to her immune system months earlier, she was not prepared for what awaited her in her jail cell.

“I was literally barefoot in a cement cell for an hour and a half. They gave me a blanket that may have been clean, but I didn’t know who used it. There was a mattress, but it had some stuff on it, so I didn’t want to sit on it. And the glass wall had all these finger smears, and it looked like someone spit on the window and it dried there,” she said.

“I didn’t want to touch anything,” she said.

Musser said she hesitates to think what her oncologist will have to say when she tells him about her jail experience.

Ercan said what upsets him most is that, despite their protests about her not being well, they arrested her and took her away anyway.

“I don’t understand how there is no room for different treatment when someone is sick, visibly sick,” he said. “If they had come for her the night before, it’s possible she would not have made it. She was that sick.”

Musser said that she did not believe the troopers knew the particulars behind her warrant until after they got her to the state police barracks and ran her name through a computer.

03.24.2014 | HOLYOKE -- Ozzie Ercan shows the selfie his wife, Ann Musser, took in the Massachusetts State Police barracks in Northampton during her arrest Friday.

“I could overhear them saying ‘I didn’t know you could be arrested for that.’”

After that, she said, the handcuffs were taken off and she was left unattended with all her possessions, including her cell phone, on the desk in front of her. Bowing to what she called the absurdity of the situation, she grabbed her phone, turned on the camera, then took a 'selfie' that she sent to her friends.

“I expect absurd things in life,” she said. “We’ve had a lot of absurd things happen to me.”

On Monday, Musser rounded up her documentation showing that she paid the dog license and the late fee and went again to the Holyoke courts. Again, the clerk told her she would have to wait in the courtroom.

When she explained her condition, the clerk said she could sit in the hall and someone would come out to get her when it was time. She asked how long that would be, and was told basically to hurry up and wait.

“So I said while I’m sitting here, I’m going to make phone calls to see who I can find who would be interested in hearing about how a woman with advanced-stage cancer was arrested Friday night and is now sitting in a courtroom the Monday afterward.”

Musser said she watched the clerk go to her phone, and a few moments later someone came out to help her. The warrant was withdrawn without her having to go to the courtroom, she said.

But she got a paper copy anyway.

“I have the piece of paper in case anyone does try to arrest me again,” she said.

“She’s off the streets,” Ercan said with a weary smile.

“Holyoke is safe again,” she replied.