Laura Stanford
Laura graduated from San Antonio’s Trinity University and taught Jr. High at Harris Middle School. In 1985, she became a mortgage loan officer and remains in that position. Her educational skills continued to be utilized for 15 years as a Jr. High Sunday school teacher.
In 2004 the newspaper article “Death by the Pound” came out, and took the city by storm. “I remember reading it and crying,” she said. “My heart just ached over the way we were sending so many adoptable animals to the gas chamber every day – and how they suffered as they sensed it coming! Then to read that San Antonio led the nation for a city its size in the number of pets purposely killed every year was a shock. We had held that awful title for years. Something had to be done.” Hundreds of others felt the same way, and over the course of a few days, email groups formed. From this, meetings were held, and Laura became a co- founder of Citizens for Pound Reform. In January 2005, they initiated a free spay/neuter clinic. Over the next few years, the voice of this grass roots group of about 600 joined with many others in lobbying the city for change. And change did come. The gas chambers were dismantled! Adoption efforts increased! Spay/neuter awareness grew! Kill numbers decreased! And the city formally established a goal to become No Kill in 2012.
AAPAW was created to organize efforts in the community to help bring the goal to fruition. Laura felt that being on the AAPAW board was an opportunity to make the message a permanent one, “so that we never return to 2004.” “I believe pets are a blessing from God,” she goes on to explain. “How we treat them reflects the kind of people we are. But how do you inspire others to improve? By demonstrating a better way. That’s what AAPAW’s Care, Adopt, Neuter mission can do, and why I’m proud to be a part of it.”
She cannot imagine life without pets in her home. “They’re good for your health, they make you smile, they remind you that you are valuable and needed.” Her current pet family consists of 5 year old Chas, found in a school parking lot, and 10 year old Oreo, neglected as a 1 year old in his owner’s backyard and finally surrendered. “I’ve never been a cat person, but then I trapped Johnnie, a stray adult tabby. He was a wild thing; I got him fixed and released him. At first he’d hiss at me when I set his food bowl too close. But he got calmer day by day and miraculously the moment came that I could hold him. Who knew that he’d eventually become a teddy bear house cat that I can’t live without!” Tigger was trapped as a 4 month old kitten, and raised inside. They all get along together, she reports with a smile, even if the transition was gradual. “I’ve had other rescued dogs that have passed on. Rusty, dumped out of a car near my home, became my most dear companion. He died from cancer just a month before the news article in 2004, and I felt my involvement in the cause was honoring him as much as all the nameless animals that had died with no one to miss them. Focusing on changing the situation that caused their untimely deaths helped me through my grief over losing him.”