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Date: Feb 13 2003
Volunteers Set Up a Free Hot Line to Unite Lost Pets With Their Owners
We found this article in the Salt Lake Tribune February 13, 2003 and we thought it had value.
One day in 1999, Maggie Wright got a death sentence. Emphysema. Thrity-plus years of her own cigarette habit and inhaling everyone else's smoke as a pit boss in a Reno casino finally caught up to her.
Recent tests revealed she has perhaps four years left. A portable oxygen tank is her constant companion. She no loner drives, and her 85-year-old father looks in on her a lot: Maggie is 59, lives on Social Security and spends not one second looking back. "Hey, nobody forced me to smoke," she says through short, stilted breaths. "But the day I was diagnosed, it was actually a gift."
A gift, she explains, because her disability has opened her eyes to the needs of others. On the morning of July 5, 2002, Maggie found a 45-pound dog running loose in her Sandy subdivision. The dog had no tags, no computer chip. She placed an ad in the paper and got a call from Debbie Haddow, another Sandy woman who does animal rescue. The two began talking about how tough it is to link owners with lost pets.
"Sometimes the entries on computer Web sites are three or four months old," says Maggie. "It's really hard for the shelters and the rescue groups, because they depend so much on volunteers, to keep everything updated."
The women hatched a plan, beautiful in its simplicity. They started a telephone hot line to match lost pets with owners. They advertise in the Lost and Found classified of the Salt lake newspaper and post their business cards on animal shelter and pet store bulletin boards.
You lose a pet, you call. You find a pet, you call. Maggie and Debbie take it from there. Debbie, a 53-year old real estate agent and freelance writer, has the car and thus the mobility to check the latest listings of lost and found pets posted around Salt Lake Valley. She brings them to Maggie, who, being mostly housebound, cross-checks them with any reports she receives on the hot line, which she says operates "24/7."
"I've answered the phone at 2 in the morning," Maggie says. "People are so used to looking at Web sites or listening to machines they can't believe when they get a real voice. They are in such grief about their pet, sometimes they just talk and talk."
Steve Johnson, a Salt Lake man whose black Lab mix, Pearl, ran off two weeks ago, called Maggie in his desperation. He also checked the shelters and placed a newspaper ad. It took four days before Pearl and Steve were matched through an outdated microchip, though the reunion did not come through the hot line.
"John Wayne, I'm not," Steve says. "When I called Maggie, I was so upset I could hardly get the words out. She was so kind. After we got Pearl back I called her because I wanted to send her a donation. She wouldn't take it."
That is true. Maggie and Debbie do the work for free. They say they don't want the hassle of setting up a nonprofit organization. More than that, this is the right thing to do.
"Since I started doing this work, I have really been blessed. Good things just come my way," Maggie says. "I would never charge money for this."
Since last summer the woman have linked about a half-dozen pets and owners. They feel sure that as word of the hot line travels, their successes will multiply.
So here is the number: 327-3464. Put it on your refrigerator. You never know if your pup might turn up missing at midnight.
-Holly Mullen
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