Bob Williams has built a community of hope.
One where heartbreak can turn into joy with one simple word: Reunited.
Williams runs a Facebook page that gives lost and found pets a chance to find their way back home. And when that happens, that reunion is celebrated by a community of strangers.
People who have lost their pet, found a missing animal or are dedicated to helping make families whole again.
Williams, 63, has been an animal lover his entire life. In 2006, he noticed most people didn’t know what to do when they lost or found an animal.
He knew there were many resources available, but there wasn’t a clearinghouse for that information.
So Williams started jaxanimals.com, which provides everything from links to local shelters to how to make a lost pet flyer. The website also makes it easy to find adoptable animals at shelters, rescue groups and humane societies.
The website was a great resource, but it wasn’t reaching a wide audience. People kept encouraging him to share his efforts on Facebook as a way to expand that reach.
It worked.
The “Lost Found Pets Jacksonville and North Florida” page he started on Facebook in 2013 now has more than 10,600 likes.
Each day, Williams receives posts from frantic owners desperate to find their pets.
Like Jasper, a 10-year-old black cat missing from Fort Caroline since Dec. 16. “We’re really worried, especially with the cold weather,” the post said.
Or Toby, a small 4-year-old white and tan dog with an underbite. “Toby is very friendly and smart. We miss and want him back with his family,” the plea said.
Williams reads each submission before posting them on the page’s timeline.
Reading so many sad tales can be depressing, he admitted, especially when the post is about an animal hit by a car.
But the reunions show Williams the page is making a difference.
That’s why he spends so much time working on the Facebook page and website. He doesn’t make money, except the rare time a visitor may click on or buy something from an ad generated by Google. Even that brings in just a few cents.
He pays the hosting costs for the website by doing web design on the side.
The reunions are priceless to him and others who dedicate countless hours to helping put broken families back together.
Lori Whisnant is one of those who’s been reunited with a missing pet because of the page.
Her dog, Bella, slipped out a door at Whisnant’s daughter’s home. Whisnant was in a complete panic.
She posted Bella’s disappearance on Williams’ Facebook page and then immediately started walking through the Neptune Beach neighborhood calling Bella’s name.
What she didn’t know at that point is the people who found Bella had also posted on the Facebook page. They ultimately heard Whisnant searching for Bella and brought her beloved pet back to her.
Once Bella was back home, she got one of her favorite toys and was ready to play. Her owner didn’t recover as quickly. Bella has helped her get through difficult times, she said. She was lost without her dog and is thankful for the work Williams and others on the site do.
“It’s amazing,” she said. “It helps a lot of people.”
Marci Moss found Williams’ Facebook page while searching for information on what to do after a stray dog with no microchip walked into her garage.
When she couldn’t find the dog’s owners, Moss found him a new family. And then she found a new passion.
Moss spends time every night looking at Williams’ Facebook page, trying to match lost and found pets by scouring sites like Craigslist, animal shelters and humane societies.
Her first success was Cash, a chihuahua mix, who had been missing a few weeks.
Her most special, though, was Pepe, a brown Papillon who went missing one summer. Pretty soon, days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months. Pepe was still missing.
A year later, Moss made a startling discovery. Little Pepe was on the Jacksonville Animal Care and Protective Services’ website.
She found the owner’s phone number on the old Facebook post. The woman was stunned. “How did you even remember him?” she asked Moss.
But Pepe had stayed with Moss, a little face she couldn’t forget.
Pepe’s owner contacted Moss a few months later to tell her Pepe, who was an older dog, had passed away. “To have him back those few months was remarkable,” Moss said.
She’s reunited about 25 pets with their families, including a dog this week.
“It’s such a wonderful feeling to help,” said Moss, who has two cats of her own — Samantha and Alexander.
For Williams, the most memorable cases are the ones of pets who haven’t been found.
There’s Rosie, a Brussels Griffon/basset hound mix, who was with her owners at Pet Supermarket on University Boulevard when another dog scared her outside the store. Rosie took off and was hit by a car but got up and kept running.
Three years later, Williams keeps the search for Rosie alive on his Facebook page.
He also remembers Tweety, an 8-year-old chihuahua who got loose from his owner’s son in December 2014.
Tweety’s owner, Veronica Castillo, still looks for him daily. The two had been together since he was three weeks old. She saw a woman carrying him at a flea market and thought he looked unhappy. She asked the woman if she would give him to her and the woman said no. But she agreed to sell the dog to Castillo.
She worries someone saw him in the street and picked him up. Tweety loved car rides so getting him into a vehicle would have been easy.
When she posted Tweety’s picture on Williams’ Facebook page, she saw how many others were missing a beloved pet. She began to work to reunite families while waiting for her own reunion.
She had seen Mickey, a white chihuahua, on Williams’ Facebook page. Later, on Craigslist, she saw a white chihuahua that had been found 100 miles away. It was Mickey, who had been stolen from his family’s Arlington yard more than a year earlier.
Mickey is one 14 dogs, including six chihuahuas, she has helped get back home.
“It’s like therapy for me being able to help others,” Castillo said.
She and Moss are thankful for Williams and the help he provides to so many who don’t know where to turn.
“If it wasn’t for his site, do you know how many would have stayed lost?” Castillo said.
The world doesn’t have enough people like Bob Williams, she said.
Thousands of pet owners in Northeast Florida agree.
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