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• (PHOTOS) A Pro-Dog, Anti-Miranda’s Rescue Courthouse Vigil is Drawing a Large Crowd

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A stray dog hopped into an open car in a Cutten mechanic’s shop one afternoon in February, a shaggy Great Pyrenees. He was dirty, filthy enough it took three baths to clean him to a brilliant shining white. The mechanic was instantly taken with him. She named him Marco. 

For the next two weeks, the dog, the mechanic, and four of her friends did their best to take care of Marco. He was about a year old, they thought, a boisterous, happy-go-lucky animal. They fed him, took turns hosting him. One of them had just moved into a place in Eureka, and she was sleeping on the floor; he slept on top of her. 

He was poorly trained but learned to take instructions well — but Marco was huge, too huge for any of them to house permanently in any of their small apartments. He had to go elsewhere, Rose, one of the people who took care of Marco, told the Outpost at yesterday’s vigil. He was a rowdy, massive dog; beautiful, Rose said, holding a picture of him on a sign, HAVE YOU SEEN ME? written on the side. “He wanted to be good, really bad,” she said. “You just had to give him a chance.” They decided to give him up. 

Miranda’s Rescue seemed like the best option to them, she said; the large property would allow Marco to run around, happy-go-lucky. The rescue wanted $500 for a surrender fee, Rose said, and they started a GoFundMe to scrape together the money. They got the cash and gave Marco to Miranda’s Rescue. Soon afterwards, she was told that someone adopted the dog, a woman in Oregon. Rose was thrilled. 

The woman in Oregon, “Tammy,” was evasive, Rose said. She wouldn’t share exactly where she lived, and she wouldn’t send them any more photos of the dog. Despite only having spent a few weeks with him, she was attached, and wanted some; the only photo she ever saw was one photo of Tammy with Marco. She had multiple leashes strung around her neck, Rose said, something that led her to believe Tammy was actually a volunteer at Miranda’s Rescue. She let it rest for a while, deciding to believe the dog was OK.

A couple months later, the Humboldt County Sheriff’s office served a search warrant at Miranda’s Rescue, based on an affidavit by a detective saying that he had reason to believe Shannon Miranda, the operator of the rescue, had killed and buried at least eight dogs on his property. (Miranda denied the accusations.) Rose found out.

“It was this horrible, crushing feeling,” she said, tearing up. “Like a big sack of rocks.”

She and her friends have been unable to determine if Marco is alive or not, and the uncertainty continues to crush her. 

“I think I’m still kind of in denial, partially in a benefit-of-the-doubt kind of way, but partially because I can’t fully believe that somebody would do that,” she said. “I’m like, ‘there’s no way that somebody is that evil.’ The idea that Marco’s laying somewhere with a hole in his head, surrounded by dirt, is something that I haven’t fully processed yet, but it’s definitely something I’m having a hard time handling.”

Much of the crowd at yesterday’s vigil had a similar story, grateful for a chance to show the thousands of people who passed by the courthouse how they felt. 

“Oh! Anger,” Joe said, his wife Maurine nodding next to him. “Absolute anger. Just — just disgust! We trusted him. We gave him money!”

“And betrayal,” Maurine added. “We trusted him.” 

They had, over the years, helped to raise money for Miranda’s rescue after adopting a dog from him, hosting bake sales and yard sales, and donating everything they made. Joe and Maurine are both big animal lovers, they said; the dog they adopted died a few years ago at the age of 13. They were so happy with him they didn’t mind all the fundraising. They felt Miranda was doing so much “goodness,” Maurine said. Their daughter and her friends, very young at the time, pitched in. Hearing that Miranda may have killed untold numbers of dogs upset them both. 

“I want to strangle that guy,” Joe said. “Well, I don’t want to be violent, but it was so — phony, so opposite of the truth, and so false.”

“I just want justice,” Maurine said. “Because if there’s no justice, the message it sends to the young generation that I helped is that it’s OK to get away with greed and murdering dogs. He needs jail time.”

“Some retribution,” Joe added. “Some awareness, because a lot of people trusted him. When you give your pet with trust to someone and you find this out…” He shook his head and sighed. 

Though many people at the vigil were there to commemorate the dogs they think Miranda may have killed (it was billed as a “quiet,” “no-yelling” event — it definitely wasn’t either), plenty of others turned out to advocate for Miranda’s arrest. Mary Murphy, an older woman with Noel and Kingston, her two nine-year-old French bulldogs tattooed on her arm, brought a pair of handcuffs she said she purchased solely for Miranda. 

“I swallowed the key,” she said. “So he’ll never get out.” 

She wasn’t joking. 

Several protestors carried signs with photos of dogs they claim were once in Miranda’s care, digitally altered to make them look like they were crying. They were made by Jenna Moore, one of the women responsible for bringing attention to Miranda. She, and several other attendees, had also been to a Humboldt County Board of Supervisors meeting earlier in the day to advocate during the public comment period that Miranda be arrested, or at least investigated further.

Murphy gestured at one of the signs, featuring a black pitbull mix named Zora. 

“I want Shannon Miranda to be arrested,” she said. “He’s killed dogs and put them in a grave, and we’ve got video of it. They dug those dogs up. Look at this beautiful — look at this beautiful dog. They killed her.” She turned towards 5th Street and screamed “Arrest Shannon Miranda!” on and off for the next half hour. 

Dan Martinez, the operator of San Jose dog rescue Adopt My Block, also spoke at the meeting and attended the vigil afterwards. He drove up to Humboldt from San Jose last Wednesday to retrieve a pit mix, Oliver, from Miranda’s Rescue. A person fostering Oliver sent him to Miranda’s after he bit another dog, but Martinez drove up and got Oliver back after hearing about the allegations. 

Oliver was in “rough shape” after spending time at Miranda’s, Martinez told the Outpost. He was “emaciated” and scarred; his spine was visible through his coat, which was missing patches of fur. The person who surrendered him paid $1,000 to Miranda, Martinez said. 

Despite the macabre accusations, Martinez said he thought they could be a catalyst for change. In the future, he said, maybe somebody will notice when one rescue gets hundreds of dogs more than it could possibly adopt out. 

“Crises precipitate change, and this is the crisis,” he said. He sounded a lot more hopeful than everyone else there. 

“Well,” he said, “I got my dog back.”