Good evening. I’m Matt DeAngelis, Executive Co-Director of Pets Alive. I’d like to introduce my Co-Director Kerry Clair. Kerry? (Kerry waves)
About two years ago Kerry disappeared from her wall street job and I disappeared from my small business in Newtown, CT. Our friend Sara Whalen had started Pets Alive Animal Sanctuary about 30 years ago as a place to rescue, rehabilitate and rehome animals in need. Over the years Sara had saved thousands of animals. Now Sara was dying of cancer and there was no succession plan for Pets Alive.
Well…that’s not entirely true. She did have a succession plan that she never told anyone about. It was me and Kerry. And you.
I run into people in my home town who haven’t seen me in a year or so who ask me what Pets Alive does. In the business world we used to call this our “elevator speech,” or how we would describe what we do to someone you meet on an elevator. Pets Alive’s is easy. We save animals.

We’re on track to save and rehome one thousand animals this year. Most were slated to be euthanized and were brought to Pets Alive a day or so before they were killed.
Every week we get hundreds of emails, phone calls and letters asking us to take in dogs and cats who would otherwise be killed. They come from everywhere, locally, here in Westchester, all of New York and all over the country.
My Mom used to say to me “I don’t know how you and Kerry do it.” It’s easy. We have you. We call it the fabric of Pets Alive…the glue that holds together the parts that make up what we do.
What do I mean? Let me tell you:
Our dogs are in outdoor runs during the summer months. There are people who come to Pets Alive every day and take dogs out for a walk. These are people who are pressed for time – they have kids and jobs and responsibilities. Yet they’re always here. When a dog is walked the volunteer puts a clothespin on the door of the run to let us know. Nothing gives us greater joy then to walk by a run with two or three or four clothespins on it.
Local businesses supply us with rock and gravel, rent us equipment at little or no cost, and are always ready to pitch in with whatever we need. They give us a great deal or donate it if they can. We have to beg a lot, but they always come through.
People I’ve never even met or will never meet donate their cars and boats and other major items to us through a company that auctions them off and sends us the money. Some months we get thousands this way.
Individuals and families, Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts, CYOs, Church groups, fraternal organizations, community service groups – they all come. They paint, they fix fences, they move buildings. Anything they can do to help us they do.
Our employees are part of the fabric too. They treat the animals as if they were their own. They are underpaid to start with, but often volunteer their time when they are not working.
So many little things. We sit in our office all day and we agonize over the lives of the animals and the future of Pets Alive. We put together a mailing and volunteers addressed envelopes. In one of the packages I found two brownies – one for me and one for kerry.
We get letters and cards thanking us and encouraging us. I have a drawer full of them that I go to when the walls start closing in. Individual dogs and cats get packages too. Treats, clothes, beds, toys. It’s incredibly heartwarming.
And then there are the donations. They come in almost every day. We cover about half of our expenses with donations, so we’re always in the red. Again, these are people who could spend this money on their kids, or a vacation, clothes a new car, so many other things but they choose to send it to us so we can save animals.
And then there’s you. You invested your hard earned money in Pets Alive. Rob and Marisol Thomas invested their precious time, energy and money to put this together so you could be here. Because of you we will be around a bit longer, and more animals will be in forever homes than in the ground.
I just wanted to say thank you, all of you, for being part of the fabric of Pets Alive. A special thanks to Rob, Marisol and everyone else involved with this event tonight. Kerry and I can’t find the words to express how grateful we are.
A volunteer put together a short video that is running at the Pets Alive table showing all of the dogs available for adoption. We were sitting in our office watching it a few days ago and felt tremendous joy as we watched their faces go by and yelled “ADOPTED!” at the dogs that had gone home between the time the video was put together and the day it was shown. That’s why we do this.
Thanks again for coming tonight and we invite all of you to visit us at Pets Alive. Enjoy the evening.