Saved

by Karin Winegar

  Grissom, the reject, the failure, has become Grissom the glowing success. “A lot of animals could be brilliant, wonderful pets and have talents to offer,” Carrie says of her last-chance dog. “They never get a chance.”

  Ally, who also got her opportunity through the police force, is a worrier and a dog with a painful wish to please. Barely larger than a fox, with a white muzzle and grave, brown eyes, she is perhaps a blend of yellow Labrador and corgie. Unlike the confident Grissom, Ally cringes in her kennel when strangers address her—the legacy of abuse. “She was beat real bad,” says Rick. “When I leave her alone, she tucks her tail at people. She is afraid of pillows and couch cushions. Someone really scared her.”

  Rick had been an undercover officer for two years when Ally became his partner and moved in with him. It was, he admits, mutually beneficial. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” he says. “I was single, living in a townhouse, going out all the time. She definitely brought me more responsibility, and I needed it. Working in narcotics is a lotta fun, a really good job, and being a narc with a dog is the best of both worlds to me.”

  Ally thinks so too, apparently. “When she finds dope and gets her toy, she is very proud of herself—she prances around with her chest out,” Rick says. “She’s a little hero.”

  And work she does. All told, Ally has found twelve million dollars’ worth of drugs—methamphetamine, cocaine, crack, heroin, tar heroin, mushrooms, ecstasy, hashish, and marijuana. Twice she found seventeen pounds of meth in the bumper of a car, and once she nosed out ninety thousand dollars of drug money in a bag in a closet. She is a sort of summa cum laude of canine drug detectives, and she ranked second in the United States for indoors search at the Police Canine Association trials.

  “Narc dogs have to have good play drive,” Rick explains. “Ally thinks she’s finding her tennis ball. And they have excellent concentration: Ally would rather take her toy than have food. She is completely focused and will look for hours; I am not kidding.”

  In this game of hide-and-seek, the risks to officers and dogs are guns and drugs and addicts using both. “We work crack houses, where usually six or more people are sitting around and selling and smoking,” Rick explains. “It’s guaranteed to have guns.”

  While narcotics officers ordinarily do not take their dogs into a site until the suspects have been removed, there are other perils. Some sites have mouse poison. Sometimes the menace turns out to be more tennis balls that distract the dogs from the hunt because they are seen as a reward. And some houses are so filthy, Rick says, “I ain’t gonna put my dog in there.”

  At other times, Rick and Ally focus on upper-level dealers, whom Rick describes as “clean-cut, bigger people who look more responsible because it’s a business; it’s very big money.”

  “People would be amazed at what kind of problem it is,” says Rick. “The dealers are so crafty in how they hide stuff that without the dogs we wouldn’t find it. Ally found kilos wrapped in twenty-one layers of axle grease, dryer sheets, plastic bags, coffee grounds, and other things to mask the scent. People are making heroin liquid, soaking blankets in it, and then drying them. If the dog hits on a pile of blankets, and you can’t find anything, there’s no way you would be able to figure it out. That’s where a dog is great.”

  Rick spends his ten- to twelve-hour workdays escorted by Ally. When he’s in the narcotics squad office, Ally moves from desk to desk for pats, and she will jump up on an officer’s desk, lie down on the paperwork, and demand to have her belly scratched. “My wife wants me out of this job like now; she’s had enough,” says Rick. “I will stay until they let me retire and keep Ally.”

  In his rare leisure time, Rick says, “I can lie down and hug a dog—Ally—for hours. The worst thing about this job is the hours. The best thing is the dog.”

  6

  MARICOPA MASH

  SHERIFF JOE ARPAIO AND THE MARICOPA COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE ANIMAL SAFE HOSPICE

  THE TOUGHEST SHERIFF in the country, the guy who stalked drug runners in the mountains of Turkey and in Mexico City, who capped his thirty-year career of coming down hard on bad guys by booting two thousand convicted criminals out of the county jail and into army tents behind razor wire, has just been startled by eight ounces of caramel-colored kitten.

  “It won’t bite, will it?” says Sheriff Joe Arpaio, flinching from the handful of cat thrust at him by a Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office Animal Safe Hospice (MASH) unit officer. “I’m a dog man, you know,” he says, regaining some of his composure but still warily holding the kitten away from his chest, where a gold tie tack in the shape of an automatic pistol gleams. “I hate cats,” he grumbles.

  The kitten looks up at him and squeaks. He looks down at her, then accusingly at the MASH officer. “Hey, whaddya feed her? She’s thin!” he bellows.

  Joe Arpaio, sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, with one of the rescued kittens housed in the jail he devotes to unwanted animals.

  In 2001, a gang in Ahwatukee, a Phoenix suburb, killed and mutilated a dozen cats as part of an initiation ritual. That did it for Sheriff Joe, who may not like cats but is a hard-shelled guy with a gooey center when it comes to creatures.

  “We didn’t pull any punches,” he says. “We blitzed the area. I formed an animal protection crew, six investigators. I go after animal abuse because it leads to murder. That executive at Del Monte who was killed by three teens? The guy who did the shooting had just burned three cats to death.” Now a fleet of police vans bears the message: Help Sheriff Joe Stop Animal Abuse—Call (602) 876-1681. “And everybody arrested for animal abuse, we put them on the Web,” he says.

  Sheriff Joe is one of those men whose contents exceed his packaging. He is intense and compact, a large presence in a smallish frame, with dark eyes behind large glasses and a manner that is a mix of menace and charm. He is the son of Italian immigrants, and his mother died when he was born. He grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts, and his speech retains the East Coast wise-guy cadence; he speeds on, almost never pausing to inhale.

  “We kicked out three hundred inmates and use this cell block for dogs and cats,” he says. “The inmates eat at 3:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., the cheapest meals in history, twenty-five thousand meals a day. We spend a dollar a day on a dog and thirty cents a day to feed her,” he says, gesturing at a young woman in the gray-striped jail uniform of the Maricopa County Jail trusty. How does he do that, we ask?

  “We got ways,” says Sheriff Joe in a tone that precludes further questions. “The food is disgusting; it’s awful,” says the woman, a MASH unit shift worker. “Yeah? Well don’t come back here then!” Sheriff Joe retorts.

  Not long ago, Maricopa County Jail reached a record population of ninety-five hundred inmates. Faced with severe overcrowding in the main jail, Sheriff Joe raised a city of tents (with heaters, fan, cement floors, and unlimited blankets—he points out) on the outskirts of downtown, masked by twelve-foot razor wire and trees.

  “Our troops in Iraq aren’t living in air conditioning; I don’t see why the convicted felons should have better conditions than our troops,” says Sheriff Joe. We don’t argue.

  “And they were watching cable TV and porn movies in the jail,” he says. “We went to the Disney channel, the Weather Channel, the ten-part series on government, and three G-rated movies: Old Yeller, Donald Duck, and Lassie Come Home. That’s it.”

  If Sheriff Joe has been harsh with the guilty, he has been no less gentle with the innocent—the animals that end up in the MASH unit. Inside the four-storey fortress that is the old First Avenue Maricopa County Jail, the harsh clang of heavy, blue metal doors is now softened with the whistles of cockatiels. Stark corridors, where a guard used to patrol every twenty-five minutes, have been painted with flowers, each inscribed with the names of animals rescued and passed to new owners: Sammy, Brittney, Jen, Cappy, Misty, Tom, Bud, Paws, Blaze, Sissy.

  The halls are Purr Lane, Trustee Crossing, Bow Wow Way, and Second Chance Circle. For now
, the MASH unit is home to twelve dogs, forty-six cats, two ferrets, and one exuberant cockatiel, a population that shifts constantly as new animals arrive and existing ones are placed with families. They have the run of cells that once held eight men each but were meant for half that number, furnished only with metal racks for bunks and a combination toilet and sink.

  Bags, cans, and boxes of donated pet food cram the former visiting room. When an animal is adopted, it departs spayed or neutered, vaccinated, and with forty pounds of food and a leash and collar in hot pink—the color favored by Sheriff Joe, who found that dyeing things electric pink deterred inmates from walking away with county-issued underwear, towels, blankets, socks, and sweatshirts.

  Here in cell no. 7, four kittens nurse at the side of their contented, sleepy, gray tabby mother. “This is the lockdown [isolation] cell. We’d never go in there unless we had three or four officers, because if you opened the door, you knew the fight was on,” says Lieutenant Dave Williams, who started the MASH unit with Sheriff Joe in 2000.

  Tom Gilmore supervises the prison’s ranch animal facility; inmates prize the opportunity to care for animals such as this Arabian stallion seized by police in a raid on a meth lab at a ranch.

  “The animals are victims of abuse, neglect, and failure to have medical care,” Dave explains. “Some are left behind in apartments to die. We’ve gone into houses and found dead puppies.”

  “We teach female inmates how to deal with pitchfork wounds, gunshots, burns, and ticks in the ear canals,” Dave explains. “They clean cages, brush and exercise the animals, and give them a proper diet. They learn to get a dog to take a pill; they clean around chest tubes and treat skin rashes. When they leave here, they can go to PetSmart, feed stores, and area vet clinics, and when they show a training certificate from us, they get hired. The animals win; the inmates win.”

  “We screen them and see that they have a plan for life after jail. This program teaches girls to care for something instead of selling drugs.”

  “A lot of the girls get done with their court case the same time as the animals, and they sometimes adopt them,” says Dave. “One girl adopted a Dalmatian named Pungo, and he goes to work with her at a vet clinic every day.”

  Dave expects that MASH units will match or exceed the improvements shown by the jail’s Alpha Program (chemical addiction treatment), which reduced recidivism from 64 percent to 17 percent.

  Law enforcement has good reason to take animal abuse seriously, he points out. “David Berkowitz’s first victim was his neighbor’s Labrador, and Jeffrey Dahmer and others hurt animals before they went on to hurt humans,” he says. “Where animal abuse takes place, chances are domestic violence and child abuse are going on in the home too.”

  Many of the cats, dogs, birds, and ferrets in the MASH unit are on “courtesy holds”—kept safe for women fleeing domestic violence who have sought sanctuary in shelters. The women may retrieve their pets when they find a safe, stable home. To turn pets over to the pound or shelters exposes the animals to angry partners or husbands who have been known to go to the pound or humane society, get the animals out, and torture or kill them. And the threat to their pets is one lever that propels women to finally leave dangerous home situations.

  “With many women, it’s ‘You can hurt me, but don’t mess with my kids or animals,’” says Thelda Williams, the division commander of inmate programs. “It’s a very powerful tool.”

  What happens to a pet when its owners are arrested? “Some animals hide under the bed and starve to death if no one else knows they are there, and some are removed to shelters or pounds,” she says. “And if they are not claimed in three days, they may be put to sleep—that’s horrendous.”

  “Sheriff Joe wanted this service, because he’s aware that a lot of women know if they leave the pets behind, the pets will become victims,” she says. “We keep them sixty days free of charge in the jail, and longer if the woman stays in touch with us.”

  Animals may also provide living evidence of crime. Last week, Dave tells us, a woman brought her bulldog to MASH because she was entering a shelter. The vet tech noticed the dog’s mouth had what looked like cigarette burns, and the woman displayed the same signs. “So she questioned the woman,” says Thelda. “She admitted her husband had put cigarettes to both of them and tried to poison both of them, but the woman wasn’t willing to press charges against the husband. So we may not get him for domestic violence, but we may get him for animal abuse, and in Arizona, that’s a felony. To think she had stayed that long, it crushes your heart to hear things like that. At least we could help her and the dog.”

  However the jail has been transformed, it’s still a jail. And it feels wonderful to step out of the close and echoing building. We drive out of downtown Phoenix with Dave Williams. Ten minutes into the desert to the west of the jail, the MASH II outdoor unit houses rescued large animals, including hogs, roosters, sheep, pigs, and goats. They come from ranches where they were starved, beaten, or neglected, or where their owners were arrested for running methamphetamine labs and there was no one left on the property to care for them.

  For now, as they await their owners’ court cases, there are twenty-six horses in the shady pipe stalls, including six stallions and one miniature mule named Jack. They are bay, paint, and roan, gleaming, and on the chubby side thanks to excellent hay and brushing lavished on them by male inmates.

  Tom Gilmore, a lean, middle-aged cowboy with an outsized roping-champ buckle on his belt, directs MASH II. Caring for rescued horses and other animals is a plum job for inmates, says Tom. “They turn in a tank order—a jail request form—then I go and interview them,” he explains. “I ask ’em if they’ve been around horses or livestock, if they are afraid of it. If they want to and are willing to work, they can learn something. Out here there are a lotta horse outfits, and after release, they can apply to help maintain the horses, do feedin’ and cleanin’ and general maintenance. One former inmate works in a feed store.”

  “The sheriff tries to tell everybody he doesn’t have a soft spot, but he does,” says Tom, who once persuaded Sheriff Joe to kiss Jack the mule on the nose for a photo. “He’s not a horse person and is kind of afraid of them, but he has a soft spot for animals.”

  The horse pens are just across the road from the tent city. That’s where Tina McFalls lives when she is not working in the MASH unit. Tina is coming to the end of a six-month sentence for selling crystal methamphetamine and for criminal impersonation.

  “I’m a drug addict. I’ll fight with that the rest of my life,” she admits. “On the drugs you are a different person; you don’t have responsibility.”

  Although she is looking forward to air conditioning and a soft bed, she doesn’t want to leave the dogs and cats. “I love them all; they all have big hearts; I want to take them all home,” she says. “No matter what you say or wear or look like, they love you automatically. It’s wonderful to get to come to work and give your love to them and they give it back to you—it’s excellent.”

  “We have animals that been locked in the yard without food, some are full of ticks, some are burned, some dogs were sexually abused,” she says. “One pit bull mix, you couldn’t go into the room without her tearing you apart if she got the chance. Now she’s a big ol’ love bug. It took her a little while. I get down on the floor with them all and let them lick and jump all over me, and none of them hurt me even though they have been hurt and abused.”

  When she graduated from high school in a suburb of Detroit, Tina wanted to be a mom. She married but never had children. Now at age thirty-five, she is on the floor playing with MASH kittens named Cuddles, Cindy, Olivia, Johnny, and Brandon. And she has responsibility for Labradors, mutts, pit bulls, pit bull mixes, and the MASH unit’s latest addition, a Jack Russell terrier named Clarissa.

  “Me and children get along perfect. Me and animals get along good; the reaction you get from them is just like a child,” she says. “Some of the animals are scared at
first; they have been beaten and they’re skittish. When they see, hey, this person’s not gonna harm me, they play and give me love back. All animals here are great. If you take the time with them and show them love, they give it right back to you.”

  When she is released, Tina hopes to find a job as a veterinary assistant. “I got tools now and can do what I need to do and be a better person than what I was,” she says confidently. “They got great officers here. They deal with you as person instead of a criminal. They don’t treat you like garbage. They give you an opportunity to prove who you are.” Tina liked the work at MASH so well she has requested to do the remainder of her sentence—seventy-five hours of community service—in the unit.

  “I’m learning a lot, and they are willing to teach me. If you do something you love, you give 110 percent,” she says. “This is an excellent program. Here I’ve learned unconditional love without having to be high.”

  7

  ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

  DON MARRO AND LILLIAN CLANCY AND THEIR DOGS

  FOU RARKS HAVE come to rest in the front parlor of the 1919 red brick mansion on a rise in the Virginia hills. Set against cyclamen-pink walls and pistachio-green woodwork, the front room teems with model pandas, whales, moose, caribou, toucans, and horses silently marching to safety up the ramps of the wooden ships.

  In the hallways, a motley pack of dogs—big dogs, enthusiastic dogs, barking, growling dogs—swirl and skitter around Don Marro, who appears kind of tall and growly himself. “We have more dogs than sense,” says Lillian Clancy, his wife, who is slight, with gray, bobbed hair and a pink out-doorswoman’s face. “There are sixteen dogs here, ten indoors and six outdoors. Two outdoor dogs are blind, as are two of the indoor dogs. Our friend John says that driving by here with all the dogs outside reposing on the front lawn is like watching the lions on the Serengeti.”