It all started with Max, the Labrador retriever with the ear that was swollen so much, Cherie Travis said, that it looked like a football.
She alleged that DuPage County Animal Care and Control had failed to treat Max’s infected ear–an example of how the county’s “most ignored department,” as she called it, was not providing adequate veterinary care to the dogs and cats in its charge.
She followed that with further criticism: The center is underfunded. The center is putting too many animals to sleep. The center is selling pet carcasses for classroom dissection without the consent of their former owners–a case she bolstered with surreptitiously taken photos of a van outside the building as it was loaded with dead cats and dogs.
Nine months after she first went to the County Board with Max’s story, the county fired the manager of the facility and made changes that bring it, in the words of one County Board member, “into the 21st Century.”
Not bad for a woman who constantly reminded the board that she was “just a law student”–a woman whose relationship with the county last winter was so acrimonious that board members sent her a letter asking her to “cease and desist any contact” with facility staff.
“I’m ecstatic,” said Travis, who lives in Downers Grove, where she runs a non-profit animal shelter called People and Animals in Community Together Humane Society, also known as PACT. “I’m still holding my breath that change might be happening.”
“I never thought it would’ve been such a battle,” she said. “I was ill-prepared for the level of defensiveness the county put up, and it’s really a shame. As a constituent, I found the process offensive.”
Travis’s role as an animal rights advocate is a recent development.
She was raised in Champaign and has a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in advertising and marketing from the University of Illinois. After college, she worked in advertising, public relations and as a divisional sales and promotions manager for GNC, the vitamin and mineral company.
Her volunteer work has covered causes from helping women on welfare get jobs by providing them with appropriate workplace clothing to pushing state lawmakers to protect schoolchildren from pesticides–an activity she says led her to DePaul University’s law school, from which she graduated last month. A vegetarian, she also was the Illinois plaintiff in a five-state lawsuit against McDonald’s in 2001 accusing the fast-food chain of deliberately concealing the use of beef extract in its french fries.
Her interest in rescuing animals evolved in the late 1990s. She had an energetic Labrador retriever and took in a foster mutt as a playmate to help tire him out. In the meantime, she trained the foster dog and readied it for adoption. That success led to a string of other dogs.
“It was amazing how fun it was,” she said.
In 2000, she co-founded PACT, which she says is the largest all-volunteer no-kill shelter in Illinois. The organization has more than 100 volunteers who pick up animals–mostly cats–from municipal shelters and place them for adoption at four suburban PetSmart stores. Since its inception, PACT has placed more than 1,500 animals–about 200 from DuPage animal control.
That was before Travis came forward in September with Max’s story, distributing photos of his ear to the County Board and calling his case “egregious.” She was prompted to do so, she says, because the dogs and cats she picked up at DuPage were often sick.
“Max represented a lot of animals that were really badly cared for,” she said.
The Illinois Department of Agriculture investigated Max’s case and determined that the DuPage facility had not handled the retriever inhumanely. The department’s general counsel sent a letter to DuPage saying it was “concerned” that the center’s director had told their investigator that Max was examined while at the center, even though its veterinarian was out of town at the time. The county said the investigator made a “scrivener’s error.”
Travis continued to press her case that the facility was mismanaged–both before the board and behind the scenes.
In December, the county’s Judicial and Public Safety Committee, which oversees animal control, sent Travis a letter telling her and her group to “immediately cease and desist” any contact with employees of the department–a move that prevents PACT members from rescuing animals from the DuPage facility.
Travis had “personally harassed members of the staff as well as volunteers” by repeatedly calling them at home and at work, according to the letter, which threatened to use “all legal and law enforcement remedies” and accused her of engaging in a “course of conduct focused on harassment and misinformation.”
Travis denied that she had harassed anyone, explaining that she merely contacted the county’s veterinarian to express concerns that the county was violating state law with its rabies inoculations. She acknowledged contacting the veterinarian at home. Every step she took, she said, was within the law.
In February, county data revealed that the number of cats euthanized at the facility had spiked 40 percent in 2004 from the previous year, while dogs killed went up 7 percent. Travis had accused the department earlier of “reckless euthanasia.”
In April, PACT revealed–through photos and Freedom of Information Act requests–that the county had been selling hundreds of cat and dog carcasses every year to a Wisconsin biological-supply company that sells the cadavers for use in science classes. The practice is legal, but unusual, and it came as a surprise to county officials who oversee the department, even though the deal had been in place since the late 1980s.
The changes started in May, when the county announced that it would begin asking pet owners dropping off their cats and dogs whether they approved of their animals’ bodies being used for educational purposes.
Earlier this month, the county announced that it had fired the department’s director–a longtime county employee whose previous experience had been strictly administrative–and was beginning a nationwide search for a new one with experience in animal control and veterinary service. The county’s veterinarian also resigned.
Two new jobs also were being created: an accountant and a rescue coordinator to work with animal rescue groups and shelters that pick up animals from the DuPage animal control center.
Last week, County Board Chairman Robert Schillerstrom announced that he was appointing an advisory board to give guidance to the department and ensure that more animals are adopted rather than put to sleep.
County officials who half a year ago were saying they were satisfied with the department’s work now say the facility should undergo a change in philosophy. Still, they’re reticent to acknowledge Travis’ role in the process.
Asked whether, in retrospect, some of the criticisms and suggestions Travis had brought before the board made a difference, Schillerstrom sighed.
“I will say this, that as we sit here today, I think we are recognizing the fact that we need to make some changes in animal control, and if Cherie Travis said things that caused us to recognize that, then she should be given some credit for doing that,” he said.
Whether Travis had pressed her case or not, animal control had not been assessed and reorganized in about 15 years, so it was due anyway, said Judicial and Public Safety Committee Chairman Patrick O’Shea (R-Lombard).
“I think this might have accelerated this review,” he said. “That is probably, if anything, what it did. But calling people up, haranguing people and claiming dogs were in pain when they weren’t, those aren’t helpful things.”
O’Shea says his inclination would be to keep in place the cease-and-desist order against PACT unless the not-yet-hired director decided to reverse it. Travis’ allegations and actions were, he said, “strong enough for the chairman to write a letter. That doesn’t get wiped out because we’re reorganizing the department.”
The letter was intended to “publicly flog and intimidate” Travis and, in effect, make her go away, said Sarah Klaper, an attorney with Citizen Advocacy Center, an Elmhurst-based government watchdog who helped advise Travis in seeking public information from the county.
Travis may be a “fireball,” Klaper said, but she’s also methodical about using her knowledge of civics law to her advantage.
“She is kind of the poster child for somebody who has a concern with government and has seen it through to the end,” Klaper said. “She is tenacious, she does not give up, and she will not be shooed away.”
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jbiemer@tribune.com
