On the case with Anchorage's pet detective

On a recent rainy afternoon, Cynthia White was crouched in a patch of horsetail ferns behind a condominium complex in the heart of Anchorage.

She had just pried open a can of cat food and tucked it into a humane animal trap. She planned to feather the ferns on the floor of the trap to make it more inviting for a cat that wouldn't come home.

White, an elfin 44-year-old with graying red hair and intense eyes, is Anchorage's self-anointed pet detective. She spends most of her waking hours trying to find the lost dogs and cats of strangers.

The case of this missing cat was particularly sad to her because the animal's owner was elderly and lived alone. Knowing how upset the woman was made it impossible for White to stop looking. 

"But every lost animal story has its own particular sadness," she said.

White was born and raised mostly in Anchorage, save a three-year stretch in the Seward Peninsula village of Teller, where her family mined gold and ran the general store for generations.

A lifelong animal lover, she worked as a veterinary receptionist until four years ago when she started a dog-walking business. 

Her obsession with finding lost pets intensified when an Iditarod sled dog named Sarabi escaped handlers in Anchorage. White helped to track the dog down in Palmer. The experience was a revelation.

"To have such a chaotic situation and to find you can actually, like, bring order," she said. "That got me." 

She became fascinated with the psychology of lost pets, the way they quickly reverted to a feral state and the way common techniques — driving around yelling the dog's name — only served to drive them deeper into a wild state.

Today, between dog-walking clients, White's days are spent — from her first cup of coffee to a late-night outing to set up a trap or camera — on work as what might be Anchorage's only volunteer pet detective.

When someone loses a dog or a cat and puts the word out on Craigslist or one of the myriad Facebook groups devoted to recovering missing pets, White gets involved. She sometimes actively seeks cases, reaching out with advice for people who've posted about their lost pets.

The people who never recover lost dogs and cats are haunted. One woman White knows owned a dog for six months before it ran away. She searched for two years, even taking early retirement to free up time to look for it, White said. The dog never came back.

"I eventually had to tell her, someone else has your dog. It's their dog now and they love it. Which is awful, but true," White said.

The back of White's Subaru is packed with the tools of her trade: Catnip and leashes, dog food and a scanner she bought for $100 that can read pet microchips, in case the Anchorage Animal Care and Control Center is closed when she finds a pet. Her cellphone is filled with contacts like "Lost Cat Channing," "Lost Whippet Monica" and "Missing Dog Lexie."

She learned what she calls her "protocol" from a woman in Kenai with experience rounding up lost pets. She perfected it with touches of her own, like drops of liquid smoke to lure pets to food stations.

White isn't sure how many dogs she's successfully returned to owners, or how many cases she's been involved in. 

"Lots?" she said.

White says she doesn't charge for the work. 

Last Christmas, Brooke Ivy was on the receiving end of White's need to find lost animals. Ivy, a legislative staffer in Anchorage, was pet-sitting for her friend's skittish, recently adopted husky on Christmas Eve when the dog bolted out a sliding glass door at her parents' house. The dog had no collar and was lightning fast. Soon it was out of sight.

"I was freaking out," Ivy said. "I basically lost my friend's dog."

Ivy posted about the dog on Craigslist, leaving her phone number. White was soon text messaging her about what to do.

"She reached out to me and was  like, 'I hear you have a missing husky.' "

White ended up coming over on Christmas morning to help set a trap for the dog.

"She's like, 'Not to be insensitive, but I like to go straight to business.' " Ivy said.

White's food station kept the dog in the area until the owner got back to town and caught it. But the husky went missing again this summer. 

White said she has an idea of where the dog might be, in a corridor near the Coastal Trail.

"I'm thinking of putting a camera down there, just to see if I can see it," she said.

Increasingly, pet owners are turning to White for more than help finding lost animals. She gets asked to find new homes for dogs people can't care for. People message her about dogs being neglected or abused. When animal control is closed, she gets the call. It can be overwhelming.

She is a co-founder of the Facebook group Anchorage Pets Lost & Found, which has almost 3,000 members. She and the co-founder of the group, Matt Beck, want to get more people involved off the internet, in real life. People are quick to share a Facebook post about a missing animal, but usually she's the only one hanging up missing signs, White said. 

Sometimes, to the people closest to White, it seems like pet detective work has taken over her life. She is on her phone constantly, sending advice to people or fielding phone calls and messages.

"My boyfriend hates Facebook. He's like, 'What are you doing on there?' " White said.

It's worth it, she said. The moment she returns a dog that has been roaming neighborhoods for weeks is like "when you get a fish in the net."

"I've never been happier," she said. "I believe this is what I was meant to do with my life."

With the cat trap ready, White readied her tape and photocopied signs. She had posters to hang. The next day, she would return to see if a cat someone else was missing had returned.