Firing of County Animal Shelter Manager Shocks Volunteers, Veterinarians
The termination letter of the manager, Sara Laboe, cites "misappropriation" of funds and other serious violations. Her supporters say she was an effective and caring worker who made honest mistakes.
BREVARD — Sara Laboe, the former Transylvania County Animal Shelter manager, wanted to meet with her boss, Kevin Shook, to ask about the county’s use of money she had raised to treat sick and injured animals.
But after she walked into Shook’s office on Nov. 9, the questions weren’t about the county’s spending, but Laboe’s.
Shook, Laboe said, grilled her about her approval of $1,545 to pay for surgery to fix a cat’s multiple leg fractures in March.
Feeling “blindsided” and “attacked,” she said, she was unable to provide detailed answers about her months-old decision. Three days later and with no further discussion she received a termination letter citing her for, among other violations, “misappropriation of county funds” and “falsification of county records.”
“I think (Shook) had already made his decision when we went into the meeting,” said Laboe, 32, who agreed to be interviewed after unsuccessfully challenging her firing.
The abrupt termination of a widely respected employee has stunned the shelter’s supporting network of animal rescue workers, donors and volunteers, and raised questions about the county’s operation of one its most emotionally charged functions — Animal Services.
Donors have asked why the county spent more than $20,000 from the shelter’s donation fund — which some of them were told was earmarked strictly for animal care — to help pay for the state-required resurfacing of the shelter’s floors.
A veterinarian who volunteers at the shelter questioned why the county seemed less concerned about the handling of a horrific dog-hoarding case than the actions of Laboe.
And though some members of the local animal-care community also implicated Laboe in the slow response to hoarding complaints and questioned her use of donated money, most expressed shock and dismay.
They praised Laboe’s commitment and say her work in building a network of rescues to take in animals and raising money to pay for their care played a crucial role in driving down the shelter’s euthanasia rate.
“Quite frankly, hiring her is the best thing that ever happened in my seven years there,” Lauren D’Alessandro, a longtime shelter volunteer and donor, wrote in a Dec. 15 email to County Manager Jaime Laughter.
And “firing her is the most egregious example of what is wrong with Transylvania County government.”
The Fund
Laboe, who served three years in the U.S. Army as an animal care specialist, began working as a veterinary technician at the shelter in 2016.
She quickly realized the need for donations to pay for medical treatment beyond the routine procedures covered by the county.
First, she created GoFundMe accounts for individual animals, and later funneled contributions into a county donations fund.
Laboe, who took over as interim manager in November of 2018 and was made permanent manager six months later, told prospective donors that this account would be used only for animal care, she said, because that was what she was told by county leaders at the time.
So was D’Alessandro, according to her email. Before starting to raise money and before donating $2,500 for the treatment of a severely injured dog in 2016, “I did my due diligence,” she wrote to Laughter.
“I was assured by the previous shelter manager and by the (previous) county finance director the fund went to a designated account . . . for animals’ health and welfare.”
Laughter said she could not discuss Laboe’s case because personnel information is shielded under the state’s public records law, but could speak generally about fundraising and spending.
She provided budget documents that showed the shelter’s donation fund had already been established when Laboe was hired and climbed from about $4,400 in 2016 to more than $41,000 in 2020.
That mirrors the growth in other county donation funds during that period, documents show, and fundraising is not due to the efforts of one person, Laughter wrote in an email, “but the result of collective work and generosity” of staffers, volunteers and donors.
Public finance laws prohibit limiting the use of funds for “a very specific, individualized purpose” such as medical care, she said in an interview.
Because of this — and because state inspectors who visited the shelter in March said the sealing of its cracked floor was needed to protect animal health — it was perfectly appropriate for the County Commission to approve, in April, the use of $22,000 from the fund to help cover that cost.
“I can promise you half of those donors would have been perfectly happy with that money going to fix the shelter so those dogs are safe,” said Ashley Marlow, who has volunteered at the shelter since 2007.
“Why would anybody be against that?”
Laughter also pointed out that a private group, the Friends of Transylvania Animal Services, raised $350,000 to help build the shelter that was completed in 2013.
Such an arrangement would allow limiting funds for a specific use, Laughter said.
But Laboe said none of her bosses ever suggested creating a separate, privately run account.
“I wish somebody had told me that is what I needed to do,” she said.
Mia the Cat
Both Laboe’s meeting with Shook and her termination letter focus on her handling of the care of a five-pound tabby named Mia, she said.
The cat was surrendered to Brevard’s Riversong Veterinary Clinic in March of 2021 with two broken legs, said owner Ann Davis, a veterinarian who has volunteered at the shelter for 18 years.
After calling the Brevard Police Department to report the apparent abuse and Laboe to receive approval for treatment, she brought in an animal orthopedic surgeon to perform the surgery.
He received a discounted payment for his work, she said, while Riversong donated medication and support services worth $871, according to an invoice Davis sent to the county.
Mia never entered the shelter because Davis and Laboe decided she needed to recover in a clinic setting, Davis said.
Laboe, however, filled out paperwork stating Mia had been surrendered to the shelter, according to her termination letter, which she provided.
What’s more, the dates of admission and surrender that she listed fell several days after Mia’s treatment, the letter says. And, in violation of county procedure, Laboe never documented the ultimate fate of the cat, who was adopted by a Riversong client.
The expenditure was not only improper, Marlow said — “That means, if my cat breaks its legs, I can take it to Dr. Ann and say I want Transylvania County to pay for it.” — but part of a broader pattern.
“A huge chunk of the donated money was being spent at Riversong . . . and (Davis) was charging astronomical prices,” she said.
That last part of that statement is absolutely not true, according to Davis and Andy Broadbent. He and his wife, Rebecca, are semi-retired veterinarians who previously owned Brevard Animal Hospital and have regularly donated their services during Laboe’s tenure.
Laboe relied heavily on Davis and the Broadbents, Davis said, because she discounted her services and the Broadbents provided theirs for free.
Davis, who, like D’Alessandro, ended her work for the shelter in the wake of Laboe’s firing, showed several invoices documenting her standard discount for the shelter — 50 percent for her services and 25 percent for medications.
She also recruited volunteer veterinarians such as the Broadbents and provided her operating room and the assistance of staffers to them at no cost.
Laboe acknowledges mistakes in handling Mia’s case, but not dishonesty. The dates are inaccurate because she approved the treatment while she was out on medical leave and completed the paperwork after returning.
The treatment of an abused cat was clearly the responsibility of the shelter and “I literally did not know” animals had to be admitted to be considered under its care, she said.
“I understand the technical aspect of (Mia) not being routed through the shelter,” Andy Broadbent said. “But who gained? The shelter didn’t make any money. Sara didn’t make any money. Ann didn’t keep any money. Nobody benefited.”
Except Mia, D’Alessandro wrote to Laughter, saying Laboe was fired for doing just what the shelter is supposed to do — “save a dying kitten and find her a home.”
Hoarding Cases
This has been a tough year for Animal Services.
On March 31, inspectors from the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services found numerous deficiencies at the shelter, including the cracked and unevenly patched floor.
Most of the problems inspectors listed, however, were with temporary kennels needed to house dogs seized in the worst animal-hoarding case in recent county history.
Just five days earlier, according to court records, the Transylvania County Sheriff’s Office had confiscated 28 dogs from Robert E. Haas’ Rosman property, where they found “multiple deceased birds and dogs.”
Several more animals were sick or starved enough to require euthanasia, and the “surviving animals were existing in subpar and infectious conditions,” the court document said.
This result was no surprise to shelter workers or volunteers who had previously seen Haas’ animals for vaccinations, nor to neighbors such as James Aiken, who had been reporting his concerns about Haas’ care of his animals for three years.
County records show that animal control officers and/or deputies were dispatched to the property 39 times between the start of 2018 and last spring; 28 of these calls were listed as “animal control” complaints and categorized as “routine” and “cleared.”
Aiken complained about loose and threatening animals, as well as “tons of smell and tons of noise . . . The pound down there is quieter than what it was over here,” he said, referring to the Animal Shelter. “It’s plum peaceful here now.”
Shortly before the seizure, Heidi Wagner, founder of the Boxer Butts & Other Mutts rescue organization in Arden, took in a dog that a shelter worker had convinced Haas to surrender after he brought it in for a vaccination.
Seeing that the dog was malnourished and suffering from infections and fractures — and learning that Haas still had many dogs on his property — she called the county’s Lead Animal Control Officer Michael Gosnell, who remains in that position, according to the county website.
“When his answers didn’t satisfy me,” she said, “I started talking to some of the managers in the county and pretty well laid it on the line: ‘Either do something or I’m going to make it public.’ And within 24 hours they got a search warrant and got the first batch of dogs off the property.”
She and Marlow place some of the blame on Laboe for knowing about the conditions on Haas’s property and failing to act.
Laboe said she notified Gosnell, as required, when she received complaints about the property, and said that his arm of Animal Services, animal control, is responsible for enforcement.
After seeing the condition of the animals, Broadbent said, “it was obvious we were looking at something that hadn’t happened overnight. These animals had been in this level of neglect for a long time.”
The Broadbents and Davis met with Assistant County Manager David McNeill and Shook to talk about the apparent inaction on the part of animal control, Andy Broadbent said. Though the county leaders told the veterinarians they couldn’t talk about individual employee performance, they did describe the care taken to educate and rehabilitate workers rather than terminate them.
“It was this nice, lengthy explanation about how (the county) gives employees every benefit of the doubt,” he said.
Which he couldn’t help but think about when he later met with them about Laboe’s case.
“What in the world about that whole speech applies to (her) situation? Reeducation, rehabilitation? Nothing. We’ll let you go home and three days later tell you you’re fired.”
A Step Forward?
Laughter, citing state law, declined to discuss any actions the county may have taken against animal control officers, or to make Gosnell or Shook available for interviews.
“We’re not going to get drawn into any tabloid-level back and forth,” she said.
Citing ongoing criminal investigations, a county attorney also declined to release detailed reports about animal control’s visits to Haas, who faces more than 40 misdemeanor charges of animal cruelty and two felony counts of killing an animal by starvation — or to the site of a similar case on Ross Road, though this was resolved in November.
(Haas’ lawyer, Brentley Cronquist, declined to comment on the case and Aiken said Haas had moved to Michigan.)
Laughter did provide the county’s personnel policy, which partly answers Broadbent’s questions about what he called the “heavy handed” treatment of Laboe.
The violations listed in her termination letter fall under failures of “personal conduct,” which, unlike “failure in performance of duties,” do not require warning before firing.
Laughter said she could not speak directly about the Haas case, but did talk generally about the county’s handling of animal complaints.
It takes action not because of threats such as Wagner’s, but when it gathers enough evidence to seize animals, which she described as a time-consuming and legally fraught process that requires the cooperation of law enforcement officers and prosecutors.
“You better have probable cause because you’re seizing someone’s property,” said Henderson County Sheriff Sgt. Paul Blackwell, who heads up animal control there.
But Laughter also said the county is looking to bolster its laws and policies to possibly allow quicker action.
“Any weaknesses we identify along the way are things we are going to work to improve and make sure processes are in place to collaborate with our partners,” she said.
And she said the successful prosecution in the Ross Road case, and the charges against Haas are positive signs for Animal Services.
So is firing Laboe, Marlow said.
“I’m so proud of how far the shelter has come in the last month or two,” she said. “Sara being gone is Transylvania county trying to move forward and trying to do better.”
Or Back?
But the shelter was already doing better according to a key metric — the “live release rate,” or the percentage of animals successfully adopted from the shelter.
In the past four years, with Laboe either working at or managing the shelter, this rate has averaged 88 percent, compared to 75 percent over the three previous years.
Most sources credit this partly to her fundraising efforts, which Shook, who serves at county communications director among other roles, seemed to echo in a glowing 2019 evaluation of Laboe, which she provided, saying it is the most recent review she has received.
It called the improvement in live releases an “amazing achievement” and praised Laboe for her work “on social media to promote and receive donations for procedures that are over and above the normal care the shelter is able to provide.”
Live releases also climbed because of Laboe’s work to bolster the network of rescue organizations willing to take animals, said volunteers and a member of one of these groups.
Laughter said the county has long had strong relationships with rescues, but D’Alessandro and others say these ties significantly expanded on Laboe’s watch.
“Sara could pull rabbits out of her hat as far as getting distant organizations such as the Humane Society of Charlotte to rescue any number of animals to free up space,” said former volunteer Paula Stone.
Shelter staffers “were very, very attentive in their communication with us. They would reach out when they were feeling full and see if we could jump in and help,” said Angela Prodrick, executive director of the Blue Ridge Humane Society in Hendersonville.
“We’ve had a good partnership and relationship with Transylvania County and I am surprised to hear of (Laboe’s) departure, that’s for sure.”
So, far from a step forward, Broadbent said, Laboe’s firing means an end to this good work and the loss of an employee he and his wife found “honest, available, engaged (and) certainly an advocate for the animals.”
And he’s worried not only what her termination means for the shelter, but for Laboe, saying findings such as “misappropriation of funds” seem intended to “humiliate” her and cripple her career prospects.
“You’re putting a tag on somebody that they stole funds,” he said, “and it’s not true.”
I am very sad to learn of Sara's firing. To me she was the best thing that happened to the Shelter in years. She cared about the animals and isn't that what it is all about.
I will never forget the pit bull (Bessie) if I remember correctly, that she was determined to find a home for instead of simply killing him. She was successful. Also the dog who was hit by a car who was saved from euthanasia due to Sara establishing a fund for surgery.
Sara did so much for the animals and saved so many lives. She will definitely be a loss for the Shelter. I think the decision to fire her is a big mistake.
I find this very disheartening. This unprofessional handling of the situation makes me worried about the motivations of our county manager & others involved.
I would like to hear more from Ms Laughter and Mr Shook regarding their thinking other than the standard “we followed the law”. If they feel they made a decision that was best for the animals’ welfare and future of the shelter they should be willing to share their thought process. A past glowing employee review doesn’t sound like the precursor to a warranted dismissal unless Ms Laboe was breaking the law.