Willow Glen Resident

Business

New pet 'Amber Alert' system helps SJ family search for its missing dog

By Mary Gottschalk

Some 5,000 San Jose homes received calls on April 1 from a woman identifying herself as being with "Findtoto .com," offering a $1,000 reward for locating a lost dog.

While a call about a missing Shih-Tzu and poodle mix named Lola may have sounded like an April Fool's joke, it was no laughing matter to Rosalena Garrett, who paid $399 to the Arizona-based company to make those calls.

Basically, Findtoto.com calls neighbors in the area where the pet was last seen, leaving a 30-second message. Calls are made between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. on weekends and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekends.

If the line is busy or there is no answer, they try three times.

Findtoto.com has an exemption allowing it to call numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry, although it only calls those numbers if there are not enough non-DNC numbers available to cover the search area.

Although Findtoto.com has recordings for lost pets, stolen pets and found pets, most of its business is from lost pets.

It's pretty evenly divided between dogs and cats, says Krislyn Sterlino, who founded the service with her brother Dustin. They have had two lost birds, she added.

They offer their service throughout the United States, and thus far the most customers have come from Texas, Arizona, Maryland, Florida--and San Jose.

Packages start at $49 for 250 calls, going up to the package Garrett bought of $399 for 5,000 calls.

Garrett wasn't worried about the cost, saying, "We had Lola for six years and I had a heartbroken daughter and son. I was desperate to get my dog back."

The saga of the lost Lola, which does have a happy ending, started on March 22 when Garrett and her two children were at Lake Tahoe. Husband Bryan stayed behind in their Rose Garden neighborhood home on McDaniel Avenue because of a new business venture.

Garrett says when her husband came home from work, he let Lola and Lulu, a Shih-Tzu, out into the back yard, not realizing a side gate was open. Although both dogs have microchips, neither was wearing her collar because they'd recently been bathed.

The two dogs dashed out the side gate, unbeknownst to Garrett's husband.

"Our neighbor saw them cutting over Bascom running toward Forest Avenue," Garrett says. "He got my Lulu, but Lola kept running and running. She was so scared she kept running.

"We've all been devastated. It's been really hard on the family. My husband did everything. He knocked on doors and put up fliers, and we couldn't find her."

As Garrett started checking the Internet for advice and posted a missing pet listing on Craig's List on March 30, she came across Findtoto.com, which describes itself as "the Amber Alert for lost or stolen pets."

"Why not do this?" Garrett asks. "It seems like a good thing, and they're calling your neighbors. I was thinking, if anyone sees her, they might call."

In the first few days after area residents got the call, Garrett says she received several phone calls offering moral support or possible Lola sightings.

The call Garrett was waiting for came in around noon on April 7, not in response to the Findtoto.com calls, but from one of the fliers she and her husband had posted around the area.

Jennifer Wilson of Milbrae called Garrett to say she thought she had Lola.

A friend had given Lola to Wilson after finding her at O'Connor Hospital.

A woman told the friend she had seen Lola thrown from a white Hummer into traffic.

Wilson said that while Lola had motor oil and dirt on her coat, she didn't appear to be injured or traumatized.

Next Wilson started looking on Craig's List and Fido Finder, but didn't see the listing Garrett posted.

She also started contacting South Bay shelters, but says she was reluctant to leave Lola at a shelter because they are sometimes overcrowded and she didn't want the dog returned to a possibly abusive home.

"My friend returned to the area and found the lost dog poster," Wilson says.

Wilson says she and her friend are donating a portion of their reward money to the SPCA.

Sterlino says the Findtoto.com success rate of found pets is around 12 percent.

Sterlino says sometimes pet owners forget to call and let them know their dog or cat has been found, so the number could be higher.

When a pet is lost, she says, "time is of the essence. The sooner you get the word out, the better chance there is of the pet still being in the neighborhood, and the more people you contact, the better chance you have of getting information on your pet."

The idea for Findtoto.com came after Dustin Sterlino lost his cat last summer, says Krislyn Sterlino.

"We did the typical things, going around the neighborhood putting up posters and knocking on doors, but you can only get so much done in a certain time frame," she says.

"My brother kept saying he wished there was a way to get the message out there to everyone, and it evolved from that."

To choose a name, Sterlino says she and her brother "were brainstorming popular and well known pet names that haven't been used and we said, 'Toto, because there's no place like home!' So the slogan came at the same time."

Unfortunately Dustin's cat Cutey McPretty was never found, although he believes the outcome could have been different if a service such as Findtoto.com was available then.

The two launched their venture in November 2007 and are close to hitting 250 in terms of total number of customers.

For additional information visit www.findtoto.com or call 877. 738.8686.