Dog Rescues Rachael Ray During Mugging

Popular TV host Rachael Ray says a dog named Lisa scared away an assailant.

Posted: September 12, 2007, 5 a.m. EST

Rachael Ray poses with her dog Isaboo in this month’s Vanity Fair and reveals how a dog saved her life during a mugging in New York.

Ray says she was living in a Queens apartment and working behind a Macy’s food counter when a teenage boy held her up at gunpoint in her building’s lobby.

The host of the syndicated talk show “Rachael Ray” says she screamed so loudly that she “scared herself,” and doused her assailant with pepper spray. He ran off, and Ray says she tried to put the incident behind her.

The boy returned two weeks later, grabbed Ray in the lobby again and pulled her into an exterior passageway, striking her with a pistol. Ray says she yelled for Lisa, the building’s guard dog, who barked loudly and scared the boy off.

Ray says the incident helped to set her on the path to fame. “I felt the whole universe was telling me, ‘You’re not supposed to be here right now,’” she says.

Ray decided to move home to upstate New York, where she took a job as a food buyer for a gourmet food store. There Ray would host “30 Minute Meals” classes, and write a book by the same name. An appearance on “Today” earned the attention of Food Network executives, who offered her a TV show.

Rachael Ray hosts “Rachael Ray” and “30 Minute Meals” on the Food Network.