ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, December 28, 1996 TAG: 9612300007
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SERIES: Whatever Happened To... A look back at 1996
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
Tara, an impish black poodle, has been a great watchdog and companion for Bette Jean Gay the past few years.
"She's a feisty little rat," Gay says with a laugh. "She's always into something, scooting around."
So Gay was terribly worried one afternoon this fall when she walked out to the mailboxes at her trailer park in Roanoke County and Tara scooted off.
She looked all over the trailer park. She checked the SPCA animal shelter. Tara had disappeared.
Gay didn't know what to think. Had somebody stolen Tara? Had she been hit by a car?
"Oh, Mercy," Gay says now. "It was upsetting."
But five days later, her phone rang. A man on the other end of the line introduced himself as Jeff Mitchell. He said he was the operator of Lost Paws, a lost-and-found service for domestic pets.
Mitchell explained he had gotten a call from a man who'd found a black poodle in a business parking lot not far from Gay's home.
The folks at the SPCA had told Mitchell that Gay had been in looking for a black poodle.
On the phone with Gay, Mitchell matched up the descriptions of the lost dog and the found dog and verified they were the same.
"Then he brought my little Tara home," Gay says.
It was yet another find for the man who bills himself as Roanoke's first and only pet detective.
Since he began Lost Paws out of his home in June, Mitchell has succeeded in returning 22 pets to their owners - 20 dogs and two cats.
When he started, he wasn't sure Lost Paws would make it as a business. Lost Paws hasn't produced enough income yet to call it making a living, but Mitchell says he's put together enough success stories - one pet at a time - to make his idea a true success.
"I think Jeff is real nice," Gay says. "I'm an animal lover and in my opinion he's got a real good business."
Al Alexander, executive director of the Roanoke Valley SPCA, says he's pleased with Mitchell's business. "It helps us and he does work well with us," Alexander says. "I think he's made a success of it. He'll never get rich. But I think he's right on track."
Now Mitchell's trying to take his idea a step further.
Early next year, he'll start doing a "Lost Paws Report" on K-92 Radio, giving descriptions of lost-and-found pets and perhaps a few pet-care tips.
He's also ready to branch out - expanding his lost-and-found service to other places, doing pet identification tattooing, publishing a Roanoke Valley pet services directory and even starting a pet taxi for people who need their animals transported to the veterinarian.
Mitchell hopes to expand by setting up franchise-like operations, offering his expertise to business partners who can become pet detectives in their own cities. He plans to target Richmond first, then look at Virginia Beach and Charlotte, N.C.
The pet taxi service will be for pets whose owners are elderly and can't always get out, or are simply too busy during the workday. It starts in January, and Mitchell already has four reservations.
Mitchell says making all these ideas a reality won't detract from his lost-and-found service, because they all relate to his No. 1 goal - helping people take care of their pets and keep them safe.
He has run across a few skeptics who don't understand what his lost-and-found business is about. But overall, he says, the response has been good.
Mitchell got calls from around the state after a story on his new business ran this summer in The Roanoke Times and then, via the Associated Press, in newspapers across Virginia. He did interviews with a radio station in Charlottesville and WDBJ-TV (Channel 7) in Roanoke. He did a live Compuserve interview with Best Friends, a pet magazine based in Utah.
He also got a call from K-92, which invited him - and his pet Rottweiler Diana - to come on the radio. Mitchell was nervous going in; all this media exposure was new to him.
The morning on-air personalities, Sally and Mofo, gave Mitchell a chance to explain his new service and then asked if he'd get Diana to sing there in the studio. Mitchell started howling, Rottweiler-style, and Diana followed suit.
Then Sally and Mofo sprang a radio-style surprise on him: They asked people to call in and have their dogs bark, to see if the Pet Detective could guess what breed they were. If they stumped him, they'd win a prize. Mitchell had no idea if he could do this.
"The pressure is on now," Mofo joked. "He's sweating."
"We can handle it," Mitchell said, trying to sound as confident as possible.
The first dog came on: Bark, bark.
"Is it a Labrador?" Mitchell guessed.
"Well, yes," the dog's owner said, sounding a bit stunned.
"My gosh, you're good," Mofo said.
Mitchell guessed right on the next one - a Dalmatian no less. On his final test, he guessed cocker spaniel when he should have said terrier.
Getting two out of three right wasn't bad, and Mitchell began talking with K-92 about doing a "Lost Paws Report." He hopes regular radio exposure will help his service grow, and familiarize people with what he does.
Starting the business from scratch has required hundreds of hours of work - and been accompanied by a few pangs of doubt. But Jeff Mitchell says it's been worth it - if only for the thrill of finding dogs and cats and returning them to their owners.
"I've learned a lot about myself and about animals," he says. "I've had a lot of fun with it - a lot of fun."
Lost Paws charges $8 to register a lost pet (registering found pets is free) and requests a $35 finder's fee when it succeeds in bringing a pet home. For more information, call 362-LOST.
LENGTH: Long : 110 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: NHAT MEYER Staff. Bette Jean Gay gets a kiss from herby CNBpoodle Tara while pet detective Jeff Mitchell looks on Monday
afternoon. After Tara ran off, Mitchell helped locate the poodle. KEYWORDS: YEAR 1996