In Tacoma and Pierce County to know about kindness and fair treatment for animals is to know Mrs. Helena Shelley. Indeed she has been a force and the scourge of animal abusers throughout the State of Washington. And if you're expecting ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVIST with a karl Marx T shirt and and a guerilla warfare manual and a diet of Tofu, you will be surprised.
Helena comes from a family in which four-legged creatures were always respected and admired. But her "career" as an advocate began, she says, in 1992 when 3 punks up in King County had been nabbed for the beating death of Posada, a burrow from the local petting zoo. Helena was so disgusted by the vile nature of the incident that she decorated herself with a colorful placard (A TEAR FOR POSADA; JAIL FOR HIS KILLERS!) wormed her way into the court for the arraignment on the next day. As she left the hearing the TV cameras surrounded her hoping for colorful statement.
But then the defense attorneys came out and the TV cameras went for them. Fortunately, one of the attorneys saw Helena, sneered, and called out: "You have your mind made up already!" Helena quickly hollered back: "I know you have YOUR mind made up because you're being paid." The attorney calmly looked into the camera and stated: "I pleaded my clients innocant. They were only playing with the animal." This was too much for Helena who shot off: " Playing! This was abusive and mean!"
And so was born an animal rights activist ( although she would never call herself that ). Helena Shelley always thinks of herself as a simple person. She believes that in a world when we two-leggers dominate everything, some of us have to protect the animals where they can't protect themselves. And in her various campaign actions she has found "tons of people" who rush in to support and protect dogs and cats and horses and pigs, if only somebody points up the hazard and gives them a direction. What follows includes some rather grizzly incidents. but Helena says if you try to cover your eyes ( or ears) it simply means that you are endorsing what is being done to the animals and want it to continue. When Helena champions a cause it's 'TAKE NO PRISONERS!"
At that time, animal cruelty was merely a misdemeanor. But sympathetic legislators proposed a tougher and toothier law. Because of attracting the public eye in the Posada case and other incidents, Helena was called upon to support and explain the proposal and eventually the state passed a law making a new felony: abuse and neglect of animals. She would later organize an initiative campaign which outlawed bear baiting, steel traps, and other operations which most sensitive people would find inherrently cruel. {I probably should point out here that Mrs. Shelley as no sentimental vegetarian. If humans hunt or slaughter animals for meat, that is the way of the world. But it must be done efficiently and humanely.}
Not too much later Helena read in the news of a couple of boys who had been arrested and confessed to arrow shooting a captive dog. These young creeps, claimed that they had only been shooting the poor animal to relive his pain and suffering. {Yah! Like 19 times!} Concerned that the Pierce County Court was about to give the usual slap on the wrist, Helena fired up her various friends and supporters and then went to the lumberyard to acquire 2x4's to make sign frames. The next morning, Helena was still pulling the splinters out of her hands and Tacoma's County-City Building was surrounded by demonstraters calling for fair play for captive dogs. And somehow, channels 4,5,and 7 were on the scene photographing and interviewing. (Helena says she just doesn't know how the media knew of her effort.) The result was jail time for the culprits though, in Helena's judgement, not long enough.
Talking to Helena about fairness to animals is like playing a well-stocked juke box. But a quarter in and you get a song. Another quarter, another song. And then another. etc. Up in Eatonville there was a ranch populated by starving and neglected horses. (The judge not only put the culprit behind bars immediately but ordered the bailiff to cuff her right in the court room and march her straight away to the cell. { That judge had undertaken a trip to the ranch; had seen the deplorable condition of the animals. }) She once heard of a hideous pig ranch out in the County, contrived to get up on a neighbors porch to get a clear viewof piglets literally swimming in their own filth, and report it all to the Humane Society which took immediate and effective action.
No respecter of power nor position where animal cruelty is involved, Helena, with her supporters, once took on the editor of the Seattle Times who, for reasons of his own, had shot his neighbors dog. They showed up on thes treet in front of the Times wearing signs that said: "EDITOR: DON'T SHOOT ME" While they made their mark, this campaign did not receive any press coverage. Surprise?
Ask her why cruelty to animals is everybody's business and Helena will tell you it rarely stops with animals. She has observed enough cases of "escalation" to be confident that a person who kills, poisons, or tortures a defenseless animal is many times on a career that won't stop until he has meted out some of the same treatment to somebody's child or even to helpless adults. It's demented and for Helena, it is bloddy serious business.
Helena is not as active in the campaign as before. She feels she has had more than her share of plucking splinters out of her hide after staying up at night building protest signs. And having repeatedly postponed the repainting of her house to divert the cash to the cause, she now opens to finally have a new paint job. And she no longer has the time nor energy to humanely trap and then place for adoption the vaious homeless cats and dogs that come around. Well, she would if pushed an no one else were up to it. But she keeps a list of shelters and adoption centers and worthy causes. ( see below ).
And anytime you want to be reminded of why our treatment of innocent animals says so much about who we are, just ask Helena Shelley
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