When fires hit and pets go missing, this San Diego crew hits the road

Reporting from San Diego —  Kenneth Bettencourt used to search for missing people and investigate homicides.

These days, he’s the guy you may call if your dog runs away.

“I’ve always loved animals, and when I retired in ’95, my wife said, ‘You’ve got to find something else to do,’ ” the former police detective said.

Bettencourt, 78, formed Animal Rescue Shelter and Patrol in 2013, using the garage of his home in the community of Del Mar Heights as a kennel to hold stray pets he found until they were reunited with their owners.

About six months ago, his nonprofit merged with the United States Service Command of America, an Illinois-based nonprofit that has focused mostly on disaster relief.

Under the new venture, Bettencourt said he has put together a canine rescue team that will be used to find people trapped in collapsed buildings and other emergency situations. He is working with a trainer who so far has put together a team of about five people, he said.

He also has added a new team that will consist of volunteers certified through training with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to help law enforcement during wildfires and other emergencies. Besides helping direct traffic and performing other duties, the team will try to corral any pets that may have fled and are in danger.

If successful, the Animal Rescue Ready Reserve could be replicated in other areas around the country, said Joseph Howe, the only surviving founder of seven who created the U.S. Service Command of America in the early 1990s.

Howe said he met Bettencourt a few years ago and was impressed with his mission. Howe said he reached out to Bettencourt to help him expand the animal rescue effort as a pilot program under his national group.

It’s a lofty goal for the small, independent nonprofit, which has about 100 members. Howe said it once had about 1,000 and had performed a variety of duties, but has scaled down and refocused in recent years.

In addition to having a military-sounding name, members of the group have military-sounding ranks. Howe goes by Lt. Gen. Howe, and Bettencourt said his title is chief of disaster relief.

Bettencourt wears a uniform and goes on patrol in a pickup, supplied by the U.S. Service Command of America, that sports an eye-catching logo with the silhouette of a horse, dog and cat with flames in the background.

The idea may sound quirky, but the timing could be right. California wildfires are becoming larger and more frequent, and there has been no official group that dispatches trained volunteers to rescue dogs and cats.

A few years ago, Bettencourt said he saw that need and thought he could fill it.

“I was thinking about what I did as a missing persons detective, and I said I could apply that to find missing pets,” he said.

Bettencourt had worked much of his career as a police officer in Oakland before deciding to finish his career in the quiet town of Gold Hill, Ore.

The town of about 1,000 turned out to have a serious problem, he learned. Far off the freeway but near the route drug runners use between Canada and Los Angeles, Gold Hill turned out to be an ideal place to dump bodies after deals went bad. A couple of bodies were discovered every other month, Bettencourt said, keeping the homicide detective busy.

Retiring in 1995, he came to San Diego and took a job for a few years working security for North County Transit. He then did some investigative work for defense attorneys, which the former police detective said he found disagreeable, before getting the idea to become his own version of “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.”

So far no team members have been deployed to help out in a disaster or emergency. In the meantime, he or another volunteer are out twice a week on patrols to help people find missing pets.

About four calls come in a week from people who find him on internet searches or who are referred by animal care facilities.

The nonprofit operates on a budget of about $50,000 a year, and Bettencourt said he’s launching a campaign to raise $100,000 to get a kennel. He also hopes to create classes that will certify its volunteers who now are trained by the SPCA.

Warth writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

gary.warth@sduniontribune.com