Prince Come Home: Community Action with Unhoused Friends
by North Seattle Neighbors with Kaitlyn S.
1.
On an evening in August during the second year of the pandemic, Kaitlyn was approached by a stranger who asked if she was okay.
Kaitlyn was in distress at the time. She was unhoused, living in a succession of tents in and around a large park in Seattle. At 29, she had been struggling with addiction for most of her adult life. She currently had a painful infection in her hip that was having toxic effects on her whole body. At that moment, she was in pain and lying down outside the entrance to the University of Washington Medical Center in North Seattle. The stranger had every reason to wonder if Kaitlyn was in crisis.
The stranger asked about Prince, Kaitlyn’s animal companion that was with her. Prince is a white husky, at that time four months old and not yet full-size. Kaitlyn and sometimes-partner Jay had used stimulus money to purchase Prince as a six-week-old puppy, and Prince had become crucial emotional support for Kaitlyn through troubled, dangerous, even battering times.
White huskies are famously gregarious and calm as well as physically beautiful, and Kaitlyn devoted close attention to Prince’s health and well-being, sometimes closer than to her own. She found veterinary clinics as needed and sometimes fed Prince rather than herself. As a result, Prince was friendly, clean and glossy that night. In asking about Prince, the stranger might have been wondering how a person apparently in extreme poverty came to own such an expensive-looking dog.
Kaitlyn assured the stranger that Prince had been purchased, and in conversation revealed another source of distress: she needed medical attention for her infection but hadn’t gone into the Medical Center because she feared that she would not be able to take Prince with her, especially if she had to stay overnight. Kaitlyn had other friends living in the park that were dog-owners, and they often helped look out for each other’s animal companions. However, many of Kaitlyn’s friends in the park were also struggling with addiction, and Kaitlyn was well aware of the way chemicals can take over the brain. She had reason to fear that an expensive-looking dog like Prince might pose too great a temptation, even to a friend, if the need for chemicals — and therefore money — became too great.
The stranger first offered to purchase Prince from Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn said “No. He’s my kid.” The stranger then offered to take care of Prince so that Kaitlyn could go into the hospital. Kaitlyn did not feel comfortable sending Prince away with a stranger that night, and the stranger did not press. He asked for her phone number. Kaitlyn instead told him that he could give her his phone number, and if she needed help with Prince sometime, she might call him. He introduced himself and gave her a business card which identified him as a chiropractor at a clinic in Bothell.
During the conversation, the chiropractor asked Kaitlyn where she lived. Kaitlyn said that she was living “near Green Lake”, some thirty blocks south of the Medical Center. Kaitlyn was trying to respond in a friendly way while not revealing her true location to a stranger. She actually lived a half mile away from Green Lake in Upper Woodland Park. She did, however, often visit friends in a community of unhoused people living in tents and RVs on a grassy triangle between Aurora Boulevard and Green Lake Park, and on one such visit three nights later, the chiropractor came walking up to her accompanied by his girlfriend and his two pit bulls.
The chiropractor said that he had come looking for her, that he “wouldn’t be able to live with it” if he didn’t find her. At that time, she had a fever of 102 degrees and was feeling delirious. The chiropractor renewed his offer to take care of Prince so that Kaitlyn could enter the hospital. He repeated that he was a chiropractor at a clinic in Bothell, and he showed her the website of the clinic to verify that he really worked there. Kaitlyn was desperate and, over the objections of a friend who was present, she chose to accept his offer. He told her to text him as soon as she got out of the hospital and assured her that he would drive down and bring Prince right back.
In the hospital, as she got medication and her delirium subsided, Kaitlyn began to have second thoughts. With a clearer head, she wondered why the chiropractor had chosen to come find her at 1:30 in the morning, and why he had chosen to bring along two pit bulls and a girlfriend who was visibly fearful. She began to worry that she had made a mistake.
The next evening, on August 19, Kaitlyn left the hospital against medical advice and began this text exchange with the chiropractor:
KAITLYN: I am out of the hospital. My mental health is not doing too well . . . I REALLY need my Prince back I have a phone number now, call ANY TIME . . . . [number]
She didn’t hear back that night, but it was already late when she texted. The next day:
CHIROPRACTOR: Sorry for the late response my work does not really allow me much free time. And I was already asleep by the time You messaged last night
KAITLYN: It’s all good but yeah I’m free anytime just call me I guess when you get off work tomorrow because it’s pretty late already tonight and I don’t really have a way of getting down to you and I don’t want to have to ask you to come to me this late
CHIROPRACTOR: Okay well anytime tomorrow evening I am free to bring your dog back to you I will give you a call when I’m off work
KAITLYN: Okay
This exchange, with the chiropractor’s assurance that he was ready “to bring your dog back” seemed to indicate that everything would be fine.
2.
The hilltop park where Kaitlyn lived was spacious, thickly wooded and full of ravines. There were many dog-owners among the eighty or so people who spread out to live in the seclusion of the park during the pandemic. For the most part, the dog owners knew each other and looked out for each other and their animal companions, but destitution and chemical dependence meant there were also thefts and betrayals. Prince had been stolen from Kaitlyn before, as recently as July, when someone cut him off his leash while she was sleeping. The thief turned out to be a housed person who lived near the park and was struggling with addiction. Presumably he hoped to get some money for a healthy white husky. Kaitlyn was unable to stop sobbing while Prince was kidnapped, but was still able to make the necessary calls to follow Prince’s registration and get him back when he was discovered by a neighbor.
More common in the park were dog thefts by housed people who believed that unhoused people had no right to have pets in their care. Another resident’s dog was stolen more than once and delivered each time to the local Humane Society. For the owner, this was like having a car towed, because the Humane Society charged a daily boarding fee which could rapidly mount to several hundred dollars and had to be paid before the animal could be released. Sometimes impounded animals could be spayed or neutered as well, without permission of the owner.
Kaitlyn herself had been harassed and aggressively questioned by housed people who assumed that she must have stolen Prince. One of Kaitlyn’s unhoused friends was once holding Prince in front of a local store while Kaitlyn went inside. Two other men approached her friend and challenged him, assuming from his impoverished clothing that an expensive-looking dog like Prince must have been stolen. They physically laid hands on him and he had to call for help. Kaitlyn was moved that her friend refused to relinquish Prince even under attack, because he knew how precious Prince was to her.
These patterns make it difficult to know if the chiropractor’s original approach and offer to Kaitlyn were sincere and motivated by concern for her welfare, or if they were always about Prince, the white husky that was so commonly an object of desire.
3.
For almost a year previous, since summer 2020, a group of housed neighbors had been visiting the park every Sunday to bring food and supplies to the people living there. Kaitlyn had not been mixing with this group very much, but at the end of August 2021, those neighbors learned that Kaitlyn’s precious animal friend was gone and not being returned. Kaitlyn was distraught and in despair. She had broken her phone in a rage, so only later were the text conversations with the chiropractor partially reconstructed from police files.
The fact that Kaitlyn had chosen to call police about this was extraordinary for someone in her vulnerable circumstances.
The chiropractor had gone silent for some days after August 20 when he said that he was “free to bring your dog back to you”. Days later, when he did respond to Kaitlyn’s texts again, he seemed not to remember that he had referred to Prince as “your dog” and acted surprised that she wanted Prince back. He acted as if Kaitlyn had given Prince to him and that she had done so while high on meth. He insisted repeatedly that giving Kaitlyn his contact information disproved any accusations that he was a thief. Kaitlyn asserted that she never left her tent in the upper park while high and that “Anybody who knows me will vouch for that.” But regardless of that, Kaitlyn pointed out that she had “the msg, the very first one in which you responded asking me when would be a good time to arrange to meet up and return him…” She added that “I AM grateful for you taking care of him and keeping him safe while I was in the hospital. Even now, despite the fact that it’s now been FOUR DAYS I’ve been attempting to get him back from you to no avail, I am STILL grateful.”
The chiropractor responded with insults and sarcasm. When Kaitlyn told him that he was not just stealing the dog from her but also from her 9-year-old daughter, the chiropractor replied: “Ill assume you gave your daughter while you were high as well.”
Kaitlyn filed reports with police in Bothell and Seattle, and then in Everett when she learned that the chiropractor lived there. All three departments attempted to shift jurisdiction to other departments and suggested that it sounded like a civil matter — in effect, an argument — rather than a criminal matter like a theft. The report from the Bothell Police Department suggested that those police accepted the chiropractor’s story: “After speaking to both parties, it sounds as if Kaitlyn gave her dog Prince to [the chiropractor] when she was high.” The evidence of the text from the chiropractor in which he was prepared “to bring your dog back to you” did not seem to be enough for police to involve themselves in this situation.
4.
When some of the group of neighbors decided to help Kaitlyn secure the return of Prince, they made two decisions right away:
1. Avoid involving police or the justice system as much as possible.
2. Demonstrate — to the chiropractor and to Kaitlyn — that Kaitlyn was not isolated and helpless but has a community of both housed and unhoused friends and neighbors supporting her.
Members of the team helped submit Public Records Requests to the various police departments to recover screenshots, texts, and records of action or inaction by authorities. They did not encourage Kaitlyn to take legal action since the judicial system would be hysterically biased against an unhoused person struggling with addiction and Kaitlyn would be unlikely to get anything resembling justice.
The first contacts by the community with the chiropractor were attempts to listen and reason. Two different people sent texts and left voice messages for the chiropractor, both suggesting that he might have misunderstood Kaitlyn’s situation, that she had community support in the care of Prince, that they hoped to clarify and resolve the situation in personal terms.
The chiropractor replied
“I don’t know you nor do I have any desire to speak with you. Do not contact me any further. . . . I have been advised by multiple agency’s to ignore any direct contact regarding the situation. I will only be speaking with legal officials further.”
5.
With the chiropractor’s refusal to communicate, some of the neighbors decided to take community action. They reached out for advice from Seattle Solidarity Network (SeaSol). SeaSol organizes hyper-local campaigns against abusive or dishonest employers or landlords, holding abusers accountable by sending letters, alerting other community members to email and phone them, leafletting, visiting and staging protests at workplaces and home neighborhoods. SeaSol’s rate of success in getting accountable action in these small campaigns has been impressive.
One of SeaSol’s most important pieces of advice was: do not launch all your tactics at once. A campaign must be able to escalate. Give your target chances to do the right thing, for fear of increasing negative public exposure.
After considering many options, the community of neighbors took a simple first step. They alerted a wider community of friends, neighbors, activists, dog-owners and concerned people about the situation, and told them that they could help by contacting the chiropractor and telling him a simple thing:
You have no right to steal a dog from an unhoused person. Please return Prince to Kaitlyn.
The organizers made sure to instruct: “Please do not threaten or insult.” They made sure to specify: “We are not planning, encouraging, threatening or supporting any illegal or violent actions toward [the chiropractor].” They asked people each to make one call only, not multiple calls for this first stage. The goal was to show that there were people who cared about Kaitlyn and Prince and who considered the chiropractor’s actions to be illegal and immoral.
The chiropractor responded to some of the texts or emails with vague and baseless threats of legal action.
SeaSol had not been asked to organize this campaign, but they did contribute an organizational letter of support. They chose to address the letter to the chiropractor’s workplace, a wellness clinic in Bothell:
It has come to our attention that one of your chiropractors, [name], has stolen a dog, Prince. His rightful owner, Kaitlyn, and her supporters indicate that he managed this by offering to care for the dog while she got medical care at a hospital and refusing to return him when she asked for her dog back. There is no excuse for his action; [name] did not rescue Prince, and members of Kaitlyn’s community are confident that Prince has been well cared for. Please urge[name] to return the dog he stole immediately.
The wider community was alerted once again and encouraged to contact the clinic and let them know that having a dog thief on their staff reflected badly on their business.
Five community members planned a visit to the clinic itself. The goal was to have a conversation with whatever management was available, to communicate that the concern was serious, and to leave. They prepared a leaflet about the chiropractor that summarized the situation. Then they chose a day to visit.
On the appointed day, the five people gathered in Bothell, entered the clinic’s lobby, spoke to the receptionist and asked to speak to the manager.
In video of the visit, Kaitlyn later identified the receptionist as the chiropractor’s girlfriend whom she had met when they came to Green Lake on that night in August.
The five community members sat and waited. After a while, the owner/manager came out to the lobby but only to say that she had called the police and told them that five people were trespassing. The five people tried to have a conversation about the problem but the manager refused to engage, only telling them to leave the property or the police would arrest them.
The chiropractor himself came walking out through the lobby and demanded that they leave. He moved outside toward the parking lot, presumably to meet the police and demand arrests. One of the team members stood listening to him in the hallway for a while, then the rest of the team chose to leave the lobby and wait outside. No arrests were made, though the police did ask the five people to stay away from that place of business. Before they left the area, the team posted some of the prepared leaflets in the area around the clinic.
6.
In the parking lot, after meeting the chiropractor himself, several of the community members shared that they felt he would never listen to reason, would never relent, would never voluntarily give Prince back to Kaitlyn. However, one of the team reminded them that many of the victories in the hyper-local SeaSol-style campaigns seem unlikely in advance and are surprising when they happen, and that the targets of campaigns usually staunchly refuse to cooperate, right up to that last minute before they give in.
Nonetheless, the path forward seemed uncertain. Kaitlyn had been without Prince for over six weeks. Her despair was mounting dangerously. She knew that a big-hearted dog like Prince might bond with anyone over time and she wondered if he might even come to forget her if prevented from seeing her long enough. The community members were already preparing several steps of escalating tactics, but it was easy to feel uncertain that the tactics would work, and some were worried about the impact of having to tell Kaitlyn if they failed.
In the event, several factors combined to bring the campaign came to an end.
The community team let a week pass in silence. The chiropractor had tried blocking some numbers, and the silence might have indicated to him that no more actions would be taken. After that week, a new group of friends and colleagues were alerted about the situation. The new group were all outraged to learn about this, and they were eager to contact the chiropractor and tell him that he should give the dog back. This new round of calls from a new bunch of numbers — including calls from people in Oregon, New York, Brazil and elsewhere — apparently made the chiropractor realize that the circle of people who cared about this was larger than he thought. He began responding abusively to some of the texts and messages but then fell silent after new developments.
Two different members of the organizing community contacted the chiropractor again, offering to follow up and listen more carefully to his side of the story. Almost simultaneously, the organizers were contacted by a harm-reduction peer counselor who worked with unhoused veterans in the Bothell area. The peer counselor had seen one of the leaflets that the team had posted in the neighborhood of the chiropractor’s clinic in Bothell. After consulting with the organizers, the peer counselor contacted the chiropractor and the clinic itself, informing them that, as a peer counselor for veterans, he was a customer of theirs and had been recommending local clients for services there. Now, however, he was going to stop recommending the clinic to his clients, as well as telling his media and municipal contacts about the chiropractor’s theft of Prince and the clinic’s refusal to take any responsibility.
The timing would indicate that the contact from a local peer counselor who could impact the clinic’s business was a tipping point. The peer counselor’s letter reached the clinic on Saturday. On Sunday, the chiropractor started responding, defensively and with continuing self-justification, to several contacts, including the peer counselor, asking if anyone could facilitate a contact with Kaitlyn. (Community members had already renewed their offer to facilitate just such a contact but he did not respond to those offers.) By Monday he was able to contact Kaitlyn on Facebook and — angrily and with condemnation of the entire unhoused community — arrange a time to return Prince.
Texting to make the arrangements, Kaitlyn was willing to say to the chiropractor: “regardless of what has happened I do appreciate you for taking care of him during this time. And I know that there’s probably a bond and attachments that have grown between your girlfriend you and him and I know this is probably a stretch but if you were interested there is a dog park at Green lake where you met me.”
The chiropractor responded that he hoped never to see or hear of her again.
7.
A community member drove with Kaitlyn and another friend up to the parking lot of the Everett Mall to meet the chiropractor at 8:00 pm on Monday night, October 25. The friend of Kaitlyn’s was Joe, the one who had refused to give up Prince when strangers were challenging and attacking him. Kaitlyn was deeply afraid that Prince might not know how to respond to her after two months apart.
They waited in the dark parking lot. After some time, the chiropractor’s white pickup truck pulled in and stopped about twenty yards away. Kaitlyn and Joe got out of the car but stayed close to it. The community member who had driven them walked over to stand by the driver’s door of the truck. The chiropractor opened the door and handed over Prince and his leash without a word.
The door closed, the truck pulled slowly away, and Prince saw Kaitlyn. He had grown in size and strength, and the community member holding his leash was almost pulled over as Prince jumped toward her. They ran over, the leash was let go, Prince galloped to Kaitlyn and knocked her down. They rolled on the asphalt of the night-lit parking lot, yowling and laughing and sobbing and reunited.
