Bio
I was born in the summer of 1975 in Escondido, California, and spent the first three years or so living in Ramona, California, which is rural San Diego County. I had a half brother and half sister from my father's previous marriage; his wife had passed away. My parents raised horses, and I learned to ride about the same time I learned to walk. Surprisingly, I have a lot of memories of our farm in Ramona, even having been as young as I was. At age two, I sang my first solo vocal performance, although I was not actually invited to do so; I escaped my Sunday School class, entered the church sanctuary, proceeded to the front of the room, announced that I would be singing for the congregation, they graciously accepted, and the performance was a huge success. I also had a seizure at age two; I have no memory of it, and no idea why it happened. Fortunately, I've never had another one.
Around my fourth birthday, my family moved to the Sacramento area, where we lived first in a mobile home, and later on another ranch. In addition to raising horses and other animals, my parents allowed my uncle to operate a small rabbit fur farm on the property, so at age four or five, I rescued my first animal -- a rabbit that would have otherwise been made into a coat. Fur farming wasn't the only animal welfare disaster going on in those days; our two dogs were producing perhaps more than thirty puppies a year, which we routinely handed out to complete strangers at the grocery store. I hate to think of the unnecessary suffering that caused, and the massive contribution to pet overpopulation in our area.
Just prior to my sixth birthday, my parents separated; my mother wanted a better life for me, and was afraid that if we stayed where we were, I'd have few options, and might become a drug addict. We moved in with my grandparents in San Juan Capistrano, where I continued to live into my early twenties. It was a difficult adjustment, moving from the farm to the suburbs, but my family took in a stray cat and adopted a dog from the animal shelter, which made things easier. And there were several children close to my age on our cul de sac, so I rarely hurt for company.
After a miserable year in public school, made bearable only by my first grade teacher, I transfered into St. Margaret's Episcopal School, where I sang in the choir and performed in every school musical. I also played a lot of basketball, and was on the team in seventh and eighth grade. Away from school, I was involved in church youth groups, where I had my closest friends.
My freshman year of high school, I left St. Margaret's to attend Capistrano Valley High School, hoping to gain a little freedom and to play on the basketball team. I made the team, but had a fairly miserable time overall, and academically the school was significantly behind St. Margaret's; I lost interest in my studies, quit doing homework, and watched my grades go down the drain. After a little more than a semester, I returned to SMES, where I spent the next three and a half years trying to catch up.
At St. Margaret's, the most important thing I learned was how to learn, and after that, how to successfully challenge authority. In public school, a student standing up for himself was generally ignored, but at SMES, teachers and administrators usually paid attention. I don't recall ever backing down from any 'fight', with the exception of cutting my hair -- it was the early nineties, and heavy metal was king. I spent a lot of time in detention, but still managed to keep a decent GPA.
I played basketball my sophomore and junior years at St. Margaret's, but gradually lost my taste for it. I was no longer involved with music and drama, but spent a great deal of time in the art room. I thought at the time that I would become a professional artist, and even took a college drawing class one summer. My senior year, I took a part time job at a pet store, and began a rescue for aquatic turtles in my bedroom and my back yard.
I was accepted on early decision to Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington, and had already received a significant academic scholarship, but as the end of the school year approached, I didn't feel like I was ready to leave my friends in San Juan. None of my closest friends from church were going anywhere just yet, so I decided to stay. I began to play the guitar that year, something I had tried to do on previous occasions but never found the discipline to learn. I played and sang in some garage bands, and played a few parties. At Saddleback Community College, I took a lot of art classes, but after a year, I began to think that college was not for me. I took a job at the YMCA of the Rockies in Estes Park, Colorado, and left home that summer.
After a few weeks of scrubbing toilets at the Y, I still didn't think college was for me, but I also didn't want to stay in Colorado if I was going to be working such a terrible job, so I quit, spent a few weeks hiding out in the dorm, and finally returned to California. I was able to get my job at the pet store back, and I worked full time until 1995, when I took another YMCA job, this time as a childcare teacher.
After returning from Colorado, I began a faux activist group called the Plunger Liberation Front, which was really little more than a way to promote my band of the same name. However, the combination of its ridiculous nature and the desire of young people to belong to something, membership to our 'freak club' grew quickly to a few hundred, and members were scattered across the globe. Had we been using the Internet in those days, I might have become a millionaire, but as it was, I struggled to keep up with the demand for newsletters, T-shirts, and pseudo-propaganda, and dissolved the group after a few years. The highlight of the 'movement' was seeing about 100 flamboyantly costumed PLF members crowding an ice rink to play Plunger Polo, a somewhat more violent and chaotic version of broom ball.
I loved my childcare job, but I knew early on that I didn't want to do it forever, and after spending several months on my feet, it occurred to me that I might prefer to be sitting down in a classroom as a student. I applied to Westmont College in Santa Barbara, and was accepted into the Religious Studies department without any trouble. I entered the College in January, which was a challenge, but academically, I did well there. Socially, it was another story; I had chosen to live in an apartment complex run by the college, and was paired with two nightmare roommates. One of them was so awful, and so well-known on campus, that it took until the end of the semester for me to make a single connection with anyone -- everyone had assumed that my roommate and I were friends, and if that was the case, they wanted nothing to do with me. So after a semester, I decided to get away from Westmont for awhile, and take a couple of semesters abroad. The school said no at first, because I was still only a sophomore, but because I was older, and I wouldn't take no for an answer, they made an exception and let me go.
I had never traveled out of the country before, save a few day trips to Mexico, so getting off the plane in Tel Aviv was a pretty new experience. I quickly found that I enjoyed the challenge of finding my way in a new place, however. I was excited to be living and studying in Israel, but on September 4, 1997, my fourth day there, my roommate and I witnessed a suicide bombing and its aftermath, and I struggled to recover from the trauma of that event. I decided to cut my stay to a single semester; I wanted out of Israel, but I didn't want to return to the fast pace of California, so I applied to Colorado Christian University in the Denver area.
I returned home from Israel and immediately moved, once again, to Colorado, where I rented an apartment and started over one more time. After the semester was over, I moved into a house in Aurora, where I had a handful of dogs and cats, and continued to play music. I became assistant director of Sheridan Outreach Center, a youth facility in Englewood, Colorado, where we provided programming aimed at the punk rock, skinhead, and gothic subcultures. We eventually expanded our target demographic and built a small, indoor skateboard park. The program was doing well until the Columbine High School shootings; several of our regulars were Columbine students (none of them were hurt), but the weekend before the incident, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold attended a concert at our facility before going to the school to plant explosives. Our director later became obsessed with our Center's role in the massacre, having given a message that night in which he stated, "someone here is going to kill somebody" before offering an alternative path. He believed that more people might have been involved in the killing, but changed their minds after hearing his message. Our facility was soon famous in the area, and we were part of several post-Columbine activities. I asked him repeatedly not to use Columbine to promote our work, warning that it would be our demise, but I could not get through to him. I left the Center that summer, feeling that our focus and our theology were moving in a dangerous direction, and the ministry closed its doors shortly thereafter.
I graduated from CCU with a degree in youth ministry in 2000, and had then to go about deciding what to do with my life. I had always felt pressure, albeit from outside of my family, to go into a ministry profession, but I felt increasingly uncomfortable with the idea. The house I had been renting in Aurora had been sold out from under me, and I had been making trips back and forth from Denver to South Park, where I owned a five acre parcel. I had property, but no home, so I lived in my van. I had to give my animals up to the humane society, as I could not afford at that time to build an adequate fence to contain them It was a difficult time for me. But with so few responsibilities, I decided to quit claim on the property and minimize my expenses by being 'homeless'. I slept in my van and kept my belongings in a storage unit, and I worked as a substitute teacher for about two years.
I had been thinking of ways to make my passion for animals work in conjunction with the pressure to become a minister, but everything I came up with was a stretch. Eventually decided that I didn't want to be a minister at all, and that instead of trying to find a way to incorporate animals into my work, I should make them my work and find ways to incorporate everything else if there was a legitimate place for it. I had been a frequent visitor to zoos, and I began to think that a zoo career might be more to my liking. I knew that meant going back to school, so I moved from Greeley, where I had been parking for several months, into the campus apartments at Colorado State University, where I studied biology.
I had become increasingly interested in big cats, and as I researched online, I learned that just as there are rescue organizations for companion animals, there are big cat rescues as well. I found an animal sanctuary about an hour from Fort Collins, which was called at the time Rocky Mountain Wildlife Conservation Center. I became an intern there for the next year, and learned all about what they termed the captive wildlife crisis, the animal sanctuary movement, and how to care for tigers, lions, leopards, and mountain lions in captivity. The Center also had quite a few bears, which I also enjoyed working with. I participated in several rescue trips, and was a part of every aspect of the facility's operation with the exception of management.
I found that what I was being taught in my CSU biology classes was of little use to me at the animal sanctuary; cell biology didn't help me to understand animal behavior, and CSU didn't offer any animal behavior classes. I was discouraged by the thought of enduring another year of chemistry classes so that I could get into a Master's program only to learn more irrelevant material. I had already begun developing a plan for the creation of my own animal sanctuary, and I realized that the animal behavior and animal husbandry came fairly easily to me -- what I really needed to know was how to run a successful nonprofit organization, and I had no idea. I applied to Regis University's Master of Nonprofit Management program, and began learning how to be an executive director.
I left RMWCC and worked with reptiles in my own facility in Fort Collins, which doubled as an all-ages night club until the fire department put a stop to it. It was unfortunate to see something so positive forced to close; in the several months that we were in operation, we were a drug and alcohol free venue, and we never had a single violent incident.
I had been playing in a band since I first moved to Colorado, but we could never make it work; after years of trying, I finally decided to call it quits. I still wanted to play music, but what I thought might be a way to financially facilitate the creation of an animal sanctuary was turning out to be the only thing keeping me from getting started. When I got an email about some wolves facing euthanasia in Idaho, I decided to leave Colorado and raise money to save them.
I went first to California, where I was able to make some headway; I obtained the use of several acres in Riverside County, and needed only to wait for building permits and a conditional use permit before construction could begin. I would also need to raise enough startup money to provide for the wolves' care. In the meantime, I volunteered for the Fund for Animals and the California Department of Fish and Game to help care for about forty tigers living in a disgusting 'pseudo-sanctuary' in Colton, the proprietor of which, John Weinhart, was on trial for numerous counts of cruelty to animals, fraud, and child endangerment. I also worked as a substitute teacher at St. Margaret's, which was a little strange, but provided me with a steady income.
My long term plan had always been to have my sanctuary in Washington state, so when I received word from Riverside County that my permits would take up to nine months to be reviewed, and then would almost certainly be denied, I headed north almost immediately. I was unable to purchase property right away, but I managed to find a remote cabin on the beach, looking across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Vancouver Island, Canada. I continued my studies at Regis via the Internet.
Regis, a Jesuit Catholic university, reminded me a bit of St. Margaret's; it was not as challenging, although that may have been due to my greater desire to learn the subject matter, but as far as my relationship with authority, I found myself in more than my share of conflict. I believed that it was my education, and my money, so I fought to get what I needed out of the experience, and I succeeded. In the course of completing my thesis on nonprofit animal sanctuaries, I conducted an email interview with Teresa Platt, president of Fur Commission USA, the lobby for mink farmers. When I found that she was being dishonest with me in her statements, I challenged her, and when she knew she had been beaten, she contacted Regis, telling them that I was "harassing" her, and threatening legal action. I knew that I had done nothing wrong, and certainly a one-for-one email exchange can't be considered harassment, but Platt wanted me expelled, and Regis was listening. Fortunately, I was able to make them listen to me, too, and I graduated a few months later, with an A on my thesis.
I loved living on the beach, but the place was too small for my growing number of rescue animals. When I brought home Abbie, a fighting dog I had found in Los Angeles County on a trip down south, I knew I had to find a new place to live, because Abbie was pregnant when I found her. Shortly after the puppies were born, we all moved into a home I purchased in Forks, Washington. The plan was to fix the house up and buy something better, with the eventual goal of purchasing property for an animal sanctuary. So four dogs became eight, and I had to reevaluate my vision for animal rescue, which originally only included big cats, bears, and wolves. I added non-adoptable dogs to the picture, and created Olympic Canine Rehabilitation Center to function alongside Olympic Wildlife Center.
I almost gave up on my sanctuary plans due to what seemed to be an insurmountable obstacle -- getting startup capital. I saw no way to achieve my goal, but unwilling to give up, I began considering the possibility of transplanting my vision to an area where my dollar went farther, and after weighing several options, I decided on Nicaragua. I had been there before, and my father had been living there with his wife for a few years; the economy was bad, which was good for my situation, and a thriving black market wildlife trade meant there would be plenty to keep me busy. I let Olympic Wildlife Center's incorporation go inactive, and took a few trips to Nicaragua to begin moving my belongings, but kept having trouble with the airlines when it came to transporting my animals. They would tell me one thing, and then the policy would change, or I would be informed that the last person I had spoken to was wrong. When my father told me he was getting divorced and might not be staying down there, I decided to forget the whole thing. He ended up not getting divorced (that time), but I'd already had enough. The whole reason for moving to Nicaragua was to make things easier, and that clearly wasn't going to be the case.
Shortly after that, my grandfather sold his home in San Juan and moved to Mexico, and between a portion of the that sale and the sale of my own house at significantly more than what I had paid for it, I had the startup capital I needed. I purchased a commercial property in Forks and began the task of converting it from a greasy truck shop to an animal sanctuary. I started a new nonprofit organization, Olympic Animal Sanctuary, and received 501(c)(3) tax exemption from the IRS shortly thereafter. I chose the name because I felt it left plenty of room for work with different kinds of animals, not just dogs or wild animals. So far the Sanctuary houses mainly non-adoptable dogs, but we also do some work with reptiles, and we are expanding to include birds and small mammals at this facility. The Sanctuary has been gaining attention on a national level, as we have worked cooperatively with well-respected organizations like Best Friends Animal Society and United Animal Nations; we have gained the reputation of being one of the only places that can deal with truly non-adoptable dogs -- those that even the most experienced trainers and rehabilitators struggle to bring around. We are working to further strengthen our reputation and develop our organization into something truly inspirational as we pursue an ever greater impact in animal welfare and the fight against cruelty.
I'm still trying to play music when I have the time, and my visual art has taken the form of the graphic design I do for the Sanctuary, and the landscaping that I do on the property. I try to travel when I'm able, getting out of the country at least once a year this summer I'll be driving an old Land Cruiser from Panama back to Washington, with a stop in Mexico for some inexpensive body work. But the Sanctuary takes most of my time, and it's the first thing in my life I've ever wanted to keep doing after so many years and so many setbacks. A little at a time, I'm seeing this place take shape, and even though I deal with a lot of ugliness in my job, I'm excited about where my organization is going. My job is a little of everything these days, and that's fine with me -- I never was one to want to d the same thing day after day.
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