October 6, 2005

Joy Joseph is helping people locate their animals lost in Hurricane Katrina.

By Diane Chiddister

Some victims of Hurricane Katrina lost almost everything — their jobs, their homes, perhaps their loved ones. And if that’s not enough hardship, many also lost their source of daily joy and friendship. That is, they lost their cats and their dogs.

Joy Joseph can’t do anything to help people rebuild their homes or rescue lost loved ones. But she might be able to bring back their pets, and she has spent countless hours the past several weeks trying to do so.

“I love to do anything that helps animals,” she said last week. “And it’s a way of passing on kindness. I’ve been shown a lot of kindness in my life.”

Last week, Joseph was instrumental in reuniting a New Orleans woman relocated in West Virginia with her dog, Sassy, who surfaced in a California animal shelter. Working from the woman’s description of her pet posted on a Web site, Joseph identified Sassy, a Sheltie, from a photo at the animal shelter Web site. Since the dog looks like a miniature collie, she was incorrectly identified as a puppy, and it was Joseph’s efforts that cut through the confusion.

According to Joseph, the reunion was covered on television. And on the Los Angeles Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Web site, among scores of photos of bedraggled dogs and cats found in New Orleans, bold red letters announce, below the Sheltie’s photo, that the dog has been reunited with her family.

Joseph is now searching for Paco, a Pomeranian owned by a 9-year-old New Orleans girl who was relocated to a Texas shelter. She has found, among animal shelter photos, two possible candidates and e-mailed them to the girl in hopes of a positive identification.

She’s also looking for a one-eyed cat, which is the companion of a homeless New Orleans man, and about eight other pets whose owners have asked for her assistance.

Joseph said she is gratified to have helped find Sassy, but she is also haunted by the hundreds of lost pets she sees every day.

“I wish I could do so much more,” said Joseph, her black mixed-breed dog, Dakota, at her side.

Like many people after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, Joseph wanted to do something. As a longtime animal lover, she said, her thoughts immediately turned to helping the countless pets she saw stranded on TV. But she had no clue how to begin. Then Joseph met New Orleans evacuee Diana Dunn, who is staying in Yellow Springs, and heard about Dunn’s three dogs who were left in her New Orleans home. Joseph set out to find the dogs, and logged onto the Web site nola.com to try to connect with people there who could help.

Her efforts finally paid off. On the Web site’s pet rescue forum, someone gave Joseph the cellphone number of a rescuer who was going house to house in Dunn’s neighborhood. Through Joseph’s efforts, the rescuer was given Dunn’s address and checked on the dogs. The ending was a happy one — a neighbor who had stayed behind was caring for them.

Although Joseph had completed her mission, she said, she found that she couldn’t stop. While soon after the hurricane the pet rescue Web site listed about 100 lost pets, the number now is close to 10,000, she said. She had picked up some skills, learned to navigate some user-unfriendly Web sites, found pet rescue search engines, identified animal shelters all over the country taking in the lost pets, and now she wanted to pass on her knowledge to others. So she began answering e-mails of those with lost pets, offering her services to help find them.

“I started doing what others had done for me, telling them who to call and how to squeak loudly to get results,” she said.

Initially, Joseph said, she felt she was embarking on a “small but good” project. The good part held true but there is nothing small about her efforts. Several weeks later, she finds herself glued to her computer for hours each day, painstakingly trying to match messages about lost animals with photos from animal shelters. Her two yellow cats recline on the stacks of lost pet photos that cover her sofa and desk, but Joseph is not resting until she reunites more hurricane refugees with the pets they loved and lost.

Joseph encourages anyone with the free time and inclination to join in her efforts. She will share information and can be reached at 767-1858. Her line may be busy if she’s on the computer.

Contact: dchiddister@ysnews.com