From Jersey to the Valley: Lessons in Humility at One of America’s Largest Shelters

I still remember the call.

It came from Best Friends Animal Society. They told me they were launching something new—a small but focused team that would travel to shelters in crisis and help turn things around from the inside. They said, “Think of it like Bar Rescue, but for animal shelters.” I was being asked to be the very first member of this embedded team.

At the time, I was the Director of Operations at a shelter in southern New Jersey, just 15 minutes outside of Philadelphia. We were taking in around 10,000 dogs and cats a year, and we had just pulled off something incredible: raising the save rate from 54% to 96%. It took a lot of hard work, smart strategy, and a great team. By the time I left, I was confident. Maybe too confident.

I really thought I knew it all. I thought if we could turn things around there, I could walk into any shelter in the country and do the same. Then came Palm Valley.

Palm Valley Animal Center (PVAC) , in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, was unlike anything I’d ever seen. When I got there, they were taking in 34,000 animals a year. Most of them were dogs and cats, but 6,000 of them were possums. That’s a whole separate story.

I had barely heard of the place before the call came. Honestly, not many people had. The shelter landed on the radar because of a hidden camera video taken by volunteers. The footage was heartbreaking. Overcrowded kennels, sick animals, desperate conditions. It went viral for all the wrong reasons. And soon after, I was on a plane.

Fifteen minutes from the Mexico border, I figured I better start brushing up on my Spanish. I imagined I’d need it every day. But when I arrived, I realized that most of the staff were just like me. I grew up Puerto Rican, never really learning Spanish. And here I was, surrounded by employees of Mexican descent, many of whom didn’t speak Spanish either. That was the first of many unexpected lessons in the Valley.

Welcome to the Deep End

Before I arrived, I did my homework.

I was given Palm Valley’s policy and procedures, a stack of news articles, and a few YouTube videos that showed some of the challenges. I thought I was walking in prepared.

I wasn’t.

Most shelters operate with a basic standard. One dog per kennel. One cat per cage. That wasn’t the case here. Palm Valley was the only shelter accepting animals from multiple municipalities across the entire Rio Grande Valley. All 34,000 animals a year were coming through one facility. There was a second shelter, the Lori P. Andrews Paws Center, which Palm Valley also ran, but at the time, it felt like a completely separate operation. The staff wore different uniforms, had different leadership, and the facilities couldn’t have been more different.

The Paws Center was sleek, modern, fully enclosed, and air-conditioned. Palm Valley Animal Center? It had one enclosed building. The rest was open air, exposed to the brutal heat of deep South Texas. Staff worked outside all day in those conditions, for minimum wage. And the animals, already scared and sick, were stuck in the same exact environment.

That first walkthrough hit hard. The director at the time walked me through rows of packed kennels. Six, seven, sometimes eight large dogs in a run built for two. Cats from different cities forced into cages together, three or four shoved into a space made for one. There was no time to separate them. No system. No structure. Just constant triage. Chaos.

I was shell-shocked. I had never seen anything like it.

But even on that first day, there was something that gave me hope.

The team.

From the moment I started meeting them, I could feel it. These were good people. They were here for the right reasons. They cared. And more than that, they wanted change. They were ready for something better. That mattered more than anything. Because no matter how broken a place is, if you have people willing to fight for something better, there’s always a way forward.

Starting the Work and Challenging the Rules

My job was supposed to be pretty straightforward. I was brought in as an embedded Director of Operations. I worked for Best Friends Animal Society, but I was on the ground every day at Palm Valley and the Lori P. Andrews Paws Center. I wore the shelter shirts. I did the same work. I was part of the team.

That lasted about two weeks.

To my surprise, or maybe not, the shelter’s Executive Director resigned. While I was nervous about the responsibility, deep down I knew it was what was best. So I jumped in.

My first move was to meet every staff member. Every single one.

One of the most shocking things I noticed during my walk-through with the outgoing director wasn’t just the condition of the shelter. It was that he didn’t know anyone’s name. We passed probably 30 staff members, and he maybe knew two or three. That was unacceptable to me.

So I started talking to the staff. I wanted to know what they cared about and what they wanted to change. One thing kept coming up over and over, how pit bulls were treated.

I hadn’t seen anything in writing about it, but during my walk-through, I noticed a row of kennels with signs that said “Pit Bulls.” Each kennel held only one dog, and the whole area was roped off with warning signs like you’d see at a zoo. It felt weird. So I asked.

Turns out, pit bulls weren’t allowed to be adopted out. No matter how great they were, if they weren’t pulled by rescue, they were euthanized. That was the policy.

I couldn’t believe it. I came from South Jersey, where most of our dogs were pit bulls or chihuahuas. Pit bulls are my favorite breed. Short, blocky, loving, loyal. Knowing this was happening, I knew we had to change it. And the staff wanted that change too.

Right around then, my friend and colleague Jay showed up. Jay was a rescue guy and also a construction guy, which made him see things from a different lens. We balanced each other out perfectly. When I told him about the pit bull situation, he was just as shocked, and we got to work right away.

First, I needed to understand where the ban even came from.

In a board meeting, I found out. A veterinarian on the board had been running a vaccine clinic when two dogs, described as pit bulls, jumped out of a truck and killed a chihuahua that was being walked nearby. A horrible incident. But from that, the shelter had decided to ban all pit bull adoptions.

That didn’t sit right. One horrible event doesn’t define an entire group of dogs. Just like not every Golden Retriever is good, not every pit bull is bad. So Jay and I made a presentation. I explained that we have to judge dogs as individuals. I even brought up stories of awful things done by lawyers, doctors, and businesspeople to make the point that you don’t throw out the whole ga profession because of one bad actor.

But I wanted to do one more thing to make it stick.

That day, there was a blue pit bull named Fiona who

was scheduled to be euthanized. We had tried to find rescue for her, but no one had space. So I asked Jay, “You wanna do something bold?”

At the end of the presentation, Jay walked into the boardroom with Fiona on a leash. She was calm, sweet, and absolutely adorable. The board members smiled and petted her. You could feel the energy shift.

And then I said, “Thank you for listening. Before you vote, I just want you to know. Fiona is a pit bull. And she will be euthanized if this vote doesn’t pass.”

The vote?

Unanimous.

Pit bulls could now be adopted from Palm Valley Animal Center.

It was a huge win for the dogs. But also for the staff. It showed them that we were there for real change. That we weren’t just outsiders dropping in to take pictures and post about the shelter online. We were there to work. And to make things better.

And that moment was the start of everything.

To Be Continued…

There’s a lot more to this story. What came next were some of the hardest, most transformative months of my career. But that pit bull vote, that moment with Fiona, that was the shift.

It was the moment the staff started to believe that change was actually possible.

It was the moment I realized I didn’t know everything. But I was ready to learn.

And that was enough.