Meet the San Diego pet detective who reunites pets with their owners

Babs Fry is on a mission.

It’s 22 degrees outside, the sun is shining and the 54-year-old is pushing through heavy traffic on Highway 8 at 5 p.m. on a Tuesday evening. But she won’t be driving to Ocean Beach for a last-minute swim. No, she’s headed in the opposite direction – to an overgrown strip on the edge of the Admiral Baker Golf Course, littered with broken beer bottles and tents.

The reason? One of her wireless cameras captured footage of a dog she was chasing. Fry runs A Way Home for Dogs, a charity dedicated to finding lost pets free of charge. So this is equivalent to their Bat Signal – or Babs Signal. She has When inspecting the area, personal safety is at risk.

“The rush for me is when the hunt begins. You get a sighting and we’re in the game. Let’s go,” Fry says. “This is a matter of life and death.”

And for Fry, it’s her life. For 10 years, she has been helping San Diego residents reunite with their pets every day. By her estimate, Fry helps find “dozens” of pets every month.

Today she already drove from her East County home to La Jolla and then to Fiesta Island before heading to the golf course. A half-dozen dog leashes hanging like rosaries from her rearview mirror and a moderate amount of fur adorn her GMC Yukon. She herself is wearing a black T-shirt with the inscription “Dog Rescue in Progress”.

She says the long car rides don’t faze her; This is just another afternoon of work.

“I don’t take days off,” Fry adds. “Dogs don’t take days off.”

As Fry maneuvers through traffic, the radio is muted. Listening to music would be pointless because every other minute their iPhone rings with text messages and calls from owners seeking help. A woman Fry reaches is distressed and asks for tips on the best plan to find her four-pound Pomeranian who escaped from her home earlier in the day.

“There are so many coyotes here,” the woman says worriedly.

“Are you talking to Babs?” a friend of hers asks quietly in the background – a testament to the local fame Fry has achieved as a “pet recovery specialist.” (In addition to helping locals find their companions, Fry has also helped owners as far away as Shanghai.)

Fry tells the woman to stay calm and follow her instructions. Her first piece of advice is one that many owners find counterintuitive: “I wouldn’t actively look for your dog,” says Fry. “The biggest mistake people make is racing their dog. And your dog is looking for them, and now they’re spreading their scent everywhere.”

This creates confusion for the pup, Fry continues, and prolongs the time they are lost. The likelihood of a dog returning home, Fry later says, is “directly proportional to the fact that people will stay the hell out of their way.” The second step, she tells the woman, is to put an old sock in her front yard because her dog will know the smell very well. Fry asks the woman to contact her soon with any updates – adding that she doesn’t have to worry about bothering her as she is available 24/7.

Fry says she learned these lessons the hard way a decade ago when one of her dogs went missing for 10 days. “I was an idiot for a day and a half,” she remembers. “I chased my dog, I looked for my dog, I did everything wrong.” After getting suggestions from Mike Noon, who runs a dog-locating service called CatchingPaws that helps owners in the Los Angeles area, Fry discovered her lost puppy – and their calling in life.

Fry, a recovering alcoholic with a 17-year history of alcoholism, had previously worked in finance. But that’s not nearly as rewarding as tracking down lost pets, she says. Fry — who had a hysterectomy in her 20s, which prevented her from having children with her husband, a Navy veteran — feels that to her the dogs are more like children than animals.

“When you get clean and sober, you need a purpose at the end of the day,” Fry says. “For me, this work and my dogs are sometimes the only reason I get up in the morning. You give me a reason to live. They remind me of unconditional love.”

After finishing her conversation with the Pomeranian’s owner, Fry admits she’s not ready to share “the recipe” for finding dogs in a magazine. Her concern is that people simply follow what they read rather than reaching out to her. And that’s a problem, she says, because there’s no set guide to finding a lost puppy.

“It’s a dance. The dog pulls out a card and I’m the dance teacher,” Fry continues. “And until your dog pulls that card, we don’t know if we’re playing the waltz, tango, or whatever.”

When Fry gets to the golf course, she’s ready to get started.

She jumps out of her truck, grabs a bag of supplies from the back and makes her way to her camera. It is wrapped around a tree and points to a large cage where she captures lost dogs. In total, Fry has about 20 cameras — each costing between $150 and $500 — which she monitors through multiple iPhone apps. The dog she’s chasing is nowhere to be seen, so Fry fills the cage with pieces of fried chicken and summer sausage, then sprays nearby plants with chicken broth and liquid smoke to lure him back later. Before she leaves, she marches to the door of several RVs parked nearby in search of information.

Earlier in the day on Fiesta Island, Fry looked like Napoleon scanning a battlefield. She squinted at the sun, hands on hips, and directed Michelle Jones, a 43-year-old nurse, to search for a missing cat. (Fry also helps cat owners.) Jones knew she had to turn to Fry because she had already used their help to find a lost dog.

“She’s incredible,” Jones says. “It takes into account patterns, where the dog has been and what their personality is. She’s a scholar.”

Jones says that’s why she recently donated $500 toward Fry’s surgery. A Way Home for Dogs is a 501(c)(3) that relies on donations – and occasionally Fry’s own savings. Fry says the organization requires several thousand dollars a month to operate, with most of that money going toward digital cameras, SIM cards, cages, gasoline and food to attract lost animals.

But Fry explains that Jones’ generosity is the exception, not the rule.

“I get yelled at every day for free,” Fry says. “It’s amazing how people can be when you do things for free. But I remind myself that there are some amazing people in the world.”

Fry explains that she’s wary of turning her business into a for-profit business for one reason: She doesn’t want money to be the deciding factor in whether someone calls her or not.

After running out of answers on the golf course, Fry hops back into her Yukon and heads downtown. Your next mission: search for a lost dog that caused an accident on Highway 5. If she’s lucky, she’ll make it back home around 10 p.m., where she runs an animal shelter with 80 dogs. That might give her just enough time to watch an episode 90 Day FiancéShe says before setting off again tomorrow morning.

“I believe God included this in my journey because He knows my social skills still need fine-tuning,” Fry says. “But I don’t do it for people – I do it for the dogs.”