“When I started as an animal-control
officer, I thought we were going to do rescues,
and there wasn’t any rescuing done,”
Navarrete recalls. “We’d show up to calls and
an animal was stuck or trapped, and if you
couldn’t do it with your garden gloves and
your catch pole and your rope, then it
couldn’t get done. It was very frustrating,
very sad to walk away hoping that the animal
would get unstuck, which I know they didn’t.
I started thinking, ‘We need to be able to do
something. It can’t be that difficult.’ ”
It wasn’t until Navarrete met Ramirez
and Ernesto Poblano, another alternate
team leader, that things started to gel.
“We just started doing these rescues
kind of ‘rogue,’ we called it,” explains
Navarrete. “We did it all with the depart-
ment knowing, but we did it on a shoe-
string—literally on a rope that was not
certified for what we do now, equipment
that was not meant for what we were doing,
but we didn’t know. And nobody wanted to
teach us, so we learned as we went along.”
In December ;;;;, they received the
green light to be an official component of
Los Angeles Animal Services, to begin in
January ;;;;.
Ramirez started developing techniques
that would keep team members safe and
researched equipment that other search
and rescue operations were using.
All members are certified through the
Office of the California State Fire Marshal,
meaning they have been trained in rope
rescue and swift-water operations. Several
also have training in large-animal rescue.
The team includes wildlife paramedics and
veterinary technicians. “So we have a huge
amount of training for all the different
types of possibilities of what we might run
into out in the field,” Ramirez says.
Their operational budget has always
been an issue. When they first began,
Navarrete says, upper management told
them, “ ‘ You’re gonna be doing rescues, and
we’ll do the best we can to fund you, but for
now we have no money, so here’s a thousand
bucks. Spend it—don’t spend it all in one
place.’ And from then on we just started
buying our own equipment at that time,
because we knew that a thousand dollars
wasn’t going to cut it.
“Now the department has a budget, so
we’re able to get funding. And then dona-
tions help too. When somebody sees that
we need equipment—we have a wish list on
our website—they’ll say, ‘Hey, how about if
I buy you this,’ and we’re like, ‘Yes. Anything
will help.’ ”
In addition to funding challenges, the
team has to deal with a very real human
aspect of the work. While the animals are
dealing with their own high level of anxiety,
the humans have to face their fears with
every rescue as well.
“We tell our team members that any
phobias you have, they’re gonna be elevated
times ;;, because we’re gonna put you up
;;; feet or hang you over ;;; feet,” says
Navarrete. “We’re gonna put you in tight
spaces, and when it comes to water, ; inches
of fast-moving water can easily knock you
down, strip you and kill you, so it’s one of
those things where you have to just focus
on the objective. And the objective for us
is, our victim is an animal that can’t speak
English. We don’t know what it’s thinking,
and we have to make sure we can do every-
thing we can to get to it safely, and ourselves
back with them, so we can reunite them
with their family.”
If the animal doesn’t have a family with
which to be reconnected, SMART will help
to find homes for it. In some cases, they’ve
adopted animals themselves.
“When I started this job I realized that
every animal’s life mattered,” says Navarrete.
“Whether it’s a pigeon or someone’s prize
horse that cost millions of dollars.” C
THE SMART TEAM is available to help in Los
Angeles County when pets stray. But it’s better to prevent your animal family members
from getting in trouble in the first place.
SMART member Annette Ramirez says,
“To keep your pets safe, the most important
things are microchip, sterilize, and license
your dogs and cats. Responsible ownership
OUR DIGITAL EDITIONS
Click here for a short video on SMART.
(See page 8 for details.)
KEEP YOUR PETS SAFE
of your pet goes a long way with being able
to keep them safe. If a dog or cat is spayed
or neutered, they’re not going to roam and
get themselves into these dangerous and
precarious situations. And if they’re micro-chipped, we’ll be able to reunite them back
with their owner in the quickest way possible. So sterilize, microchip and license.”—SF
Rescues can take
place up 100-foot
trees or in tight
spaces under homes.
SMART rescues can range
from baby squirrels to horses.
