They look like your worst nightmare, tattooed hell-raisers prowling the streets just looking for trouble – but that’s OK, because they’re actually tender-hearted animal detectives and ruffling a few feathers is how they recover kidnapped and abused pets.
With their noses to the ground, members of Rescue Ink, a nonprofit group based on Long Island, will stop at nothing within the bounds of the law to protect animals.
One member, retired NYPD Detective Angel Nieves, 46, applies the gumshoe skills he learned on the force to make street toughs cough up leads when he is tracking a missing or swiped dog.
“I think the investigative part of me will never leave me,” he said. “I’ve been doing cases for 15 years, and every time there’s a result and I see the expressions on their faces, it makes me feel happy.”
Nieves isn’t the only one with pit-bull instincts.
Mike Ostrosky, 48, who sports two skulls on the side of his shaved head, said the crew sprang into action after a 3-year-old English bulldog, Clara, was kidnapped in Manhattan on March 18 when it was left unattended by its owner, Jessica Kurland, outside a supermarket.
“It’s always one guy you can spot, the thug of the block that knows everything,” Ostrosky said. “Within an 8-to-10-block radius, we put out the noise, let them know we’re serious. The turnover is fast.
“The point is to put the pressure on them. If you’re in their face messing with their other business activities, they’re going to want to move the heat from them until they find the dog.”
The day after Rescue Ink handed out “missing” fliers, quizzed store owners and put the word out to just the right ne’er-do-well characters, Clara’s owner got the phone call she had prayed for.
A man said his son had found Clara wandering the street and could they meet up to return the dog. Whatever the real story was, Clara was back in her grateful owner’s arms a little while later.
“They are absolute angels,” a thankful Kurland said.
Ostrosky, who helped track down Clara, said: “We have an 80 percent victory rate. If we learn of the missing dog the first few hours or day, that’s real good.
“If a couple of people go around meekly looking for the dog, they won’t get any response. We bring the heat. We don’t give up until it’s solved.”
On March 22, Rescue Ink hit the streets again, this time in New Jersey. Two show corgis, Daddy Warbucks and Sammy – worth $5,000 each – had been stolen, along with a GPS system, from a car.
They put the verbal screws to a known car-radio thief and explained that this was not good business and that he should do something about it.
Three agonizing days later, the Newark Humane Society said, an anonymous person turned in the beloved pets and jubilant owner Faye Adcock had them back.