For weeks, Janie Emerson kept a small wooden box of ashes on a special table in her La Jolla home. Next to it sat a framed snapshot of her beloved dog, Liz.
The West Highland white terrier, who died in July just shy of turning 16, competed in dog shows and at one point was ranked as the top female Westie in the country. Emerson says she was “crazy smart,” elegant and regal.
After Liz died, she drove the dog’s body to Angel Paws Pet Cremation in San Marcos, where she had taken other pets. About a month later, the business owner gave her a box he said contained Liz’s cremated remains.
But it wasn’t Liz in the box.
Liz’s body was still inside the now-defunct business, which abruptly closed its doors in early September.
Authorities are now trying to untangle what happened at the Pacific Street business, where a number of dogs and cats remain in freezers, some reportedly in poor condition and without identifying tags.
In the meantime, a competing pet cremation business has stepped up to help those who have been able to get their pets’ remains back. And a sheriff’s investigation into possible fraud at Angel Paws is underway, said sheriff’s Deputy Kia Sawada.
The now-closed Angel Paws Pet Cremation operated out of a corner unit in a San Marcos industrial park. Sheriff’s investigators are looking into fraud allegations involving the business. (Karen Kucher / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Unanswered phones
Some customers waiting for their pets’ ashes began to realize something was amiss at Angel Paws in August when they weren’t able to get anyone on the phone, and messages went unanswered.
At one point, customers heard a rumor that SDG&E was shutting off electricity to the building — an alarming development that would have left the business’s freezers without power. Pets would defrost and decompose.
Word started to get around. San Diego Council President Joe LaCava that day posted his concerns on Facebook: “Anyone know what’s happening to Angel Paws Pet Aftercare in San Marcos? Business has apparently been shut down. No website, no phone. How can customers retrieve their pets? We are trying to prevent power from being turned off in case there are still pets in their morgue.”
A few days later, owner Chris Settle met with Emerson and gave her a cedar box purportedly containing Liz’s ashes. At that point, she said, she had no reason to wonder if they were from her dog.
Liz, a West Highland white terrier, died in July just eight days short of her 16th birthday. This is a photo taken the morning before she died. (Janie Emerson)
She and two other longtime customers thought Settle, at that point the only person working at the business, had simply fallen behind and needed help. They offered to make calls to his customers and to package orders.
Then they heard rumors that the gas to the crematorium had been cut off in July, before their pets had died. And that made them question whether the boxes he’d handed them contained their beloved pets. “You can’t run a crematorium without gas,” Emerson said.
Complaints lodged
By August, the city of San Marcos was fielding complaints about odors at Angel Paws. Code enforcement staff members made multiple trips to the business in the following weeks. At one point, they were joined by representatives from the county Air Pollution Control District, which regulates pet cremation businesses, and a county hazardous materials team, a city spokesperson said.
The city eventually got a court order that allowed staff to enter the building. Based on what was found, the city hired a biohazard contractor to clean up the premises, work that was completed in late September, the spokesperson said.
In mid-August, the building’s owner filed a lawsuit seeking to evict Settle from the property. In court documents, he alleges that Settle stopped paying rent and allowed electricity and gas at the premises to be shut off, creating a “biohazard” that the city stepped in to control. It remains unclear when the eviction order will be served.
In court filings, Settle denied the lawsuit allegations. He could not be reached for comment.
On Oct. 3, sheriff’s deputies served a search warrant at the property as part of a fraud investigation. The action came after the Sheriff’s Office received complaints from people who were not able to pick up their animals’ remains, as well as complaints about odors at the business, Sawada said.
Deputies also were called out to the industrial park on preserve the peace calls, she said. Sawada said emotions have run high at times. “We love (our pets) like our own, it is difficult for a lot of people,” she said.
Over the past several weeks, a handful of frustrated pet owners were able to retrieve the bodies of their pets from Angel Paws with the help of sheriff’s deputies and others.
Emerson got Liz back on Sept. 30.
“She was pretty much frozen solid from her ribcage up, but she was thawing” in her lower body, she said. She took the dog to Sorrento Valley Pet Cemetery, where she was eventually cremated.
Murphy Brown, an Australian shepherd who was a service dog, was supposed to be cremated at Angel Paws. Said owner Denise Parker: “He was the best dog I’ve ever owned.” (Denise Parker)
On the same day Emerson got her dog, Denise Parker drove to Angel Paws to try to pick up Murphy Brown, her 58-pound Australian shepherd. Deputies were at the business, she said, and Settle was inside.
Parker said she pounded on the glass and yelled to Settle, and he agreed to let her in. She dug through four freezers to find her dog, recognizing it by the green drawstrings of the trash bag. She said the smell inside was awful, and all of the freezers she opened were filled to the top with animals, some that weren’t in bags.
Her dog had been thawed and refrozen at least twice, she said.
Weeks earlier, Settle had given Parker a box purported to contain her dog’s ashes. She was suspicious they might not be Murphy Brown because she had cremated several other pets — and the box felt too light in her hand.
“I swear I’m traumatized from this,” said Parker, who considered Murphy Brown “her heart and soul dog.”
“I cannot put his box out here with all the other boxes on my shelf,” she said last week from her San Marcos home. “He’s back in my bedroom. I just want him by me.”
Helping others reunite
With pets still stored in freezers, some of Angel Paws’ former customers are focused on reuniting owners with their animals.
Linda Logan, a longtime customer, borrowed a microchip reader so she could scan pets to try to identify owners. She has remained in contact with Settle, whom she has known for 15 years.
On Friday, she and another former customer went through around 10 freezers, she said, scanning pets that weren’t tagged. She found one dog that was microchipped and hopes the discovery will help identify its owner.
Raggs, an Akita who was a mobility/stability and medical alert service dog, died June 19. His owner, Linda Logan, believes the box of ashes she received from Angel Paws contains Raggs’ ashes. (Linda Logan)
Settle, who let her in and helped by lifting dogs, told her he planned to deliver two or three bodies to their owners as well as some completed ashes to customers.
He told her that he’s dealing with some medical problems, personal matters and had issues with his landlord. “He’s been very overwhelmed,” Logan said. “He just wants to get the pets back to the people. That’s his main goal.”
While some customers were given ashes that weren’t from their cremated pets, Logan feels confident the two boxes she picked up earlier this year contain ashes from her two Akitas. “He has assured me I have both my boys,” she said.
The number of pets inside the business isn’t clear. CBS8 has reported it was “well over 100” and showed photos of deputies standing near chest freezers. Some believe there could be as many as 300.
Customers who want their pets back have been told to send contact information, along with the name and description of the pet, to bestfriendsunitedSD@gmail.com. To help identify their animal, they are asked to send photos, the date it was dropped off at Angel Paws and information about the pet’s microchip if it has one. The email was set up by the building’s landlord.
Janie Emerson receives the remains of her dog, Liz, from Gerry Wellman at Sorrento Valley Pet Cemetery on Oct. 9. (Meg McLaughlin / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
“Once there is legal access to the property, one by one these pets are going to be examined and tried to match with owners,” said Gary Wellman, general manager of Sorrento Valley Pet Cemetery. He offered to help affected pet owners, providing the cremations at no charge, after seeing a news story on CBS8.
Wellman said his company cremated about 33 animals from Angel Paws last month after a friend of Settle’s brought the animals in a U-Haul truck. They were done as a communal cremation, with the ashes spread in a garden at the business.
As of Wednesday, the company had cremated six dogs and a sheep in private cremations, and it has received inquiries from more than two dozen people looking for their pets.
“These pets deserve closure and the owners deserve closure,” Wellman said.