Animal Rescue Foundation dispute

WALNUT CREEK — Tony La Russa’s breakup with the Animal Rescue Foundation got uglier Friday afternoon, with an attorney for his family saying that the nonprofit has refused to let him retrieve his personal collection of baseball memorabilia and family gifts, including a guitar presented to him by Bruce Springsteen as congratulations for winning the 2006 World Series Championship.
The collection has long been on display at the East Bay nonprofit, which the former Oakland As manager and his wife, Elaine La Russa, co-founded in 1991 to help find loving, permanent homes for stray and abandoned cats and dogs. The collection includes trophies, rings and Hall of Fame induction mementos. But La Russa and his family said that ARF has refused to let them come into the Walnut Creek facility to take home their belongings.
“There is no cause for ARF to hold hostage our family’s valuable personal belongings,” La Russa said. “Our family has taken the high road during this very difficult time, but this is baffling and extremely upsetting.”
Officials at ARF dispute La Russa’s claims, saying they are trying to work out a schedule for La Russa or a representative to retrieve the items in question.
Earlier this week, Tony and Elaine La Russa and their daughters, Bianca and Devon La Russa, announced they had cut ties with the organization that had become synonymous with their Alamo-based family’s brand of local philanthropy. In a statement Wednesday, the family cited concerns about the current leadership and said ARF executives were no longer committed to fostering a culture of “compassion and care for animals” and “mutual respect” among employees.
On Friday, attorney Shauna N. Correia said the family “made a very reasonable request” to coordinate a mutually convenient time when they could come to ARF, remove their most valuable belongings and photograph and make a list of the remaining items. The family gave ARF a deadline of Wednesday to let them into the building.
Instead, family members were told to stay away. Correia said the family had received a notice from ARF board president Greg McCoy, a Danville attorney, saying, “for reasons that should be obvious, the La Russa family will not be allowed on ARF property.”
In a statement, ARF was clearly taken aback by La Russa’s claims, saying its leaders have been in “direct contact” with La Russa and he’s “fully aware” that the organization is working to get his personal property back.
“Tony has communicated with ARF on several occasions this week in what have been very pleasant exchanges about how to arrange the pick-up of his personal property items in an orderly fashion, including details about property that he obtained specifically for ARF and would like to have remain in ARF’s possession,” the statement said.
But Elaine La Russa portrayed the communication between her family and ARF as anything but pleasant because of the organization’s hardline stance.
“I can’t understand why ARF is making one of the most heartbreaking times of our lives even more painful by withholding some of our most sentimental belongings,” Elaine La Russa said.
ARF has otherwise prioritized fulfilling another La Russa family request, Correia said. In a cease and desist letter the family sent to ARF on March 3, the family asked to have their names removed from the organization’s signage and said they no longer wanted their “reputations” associated with the nonprofit.
Correia said ARF has already begun removing signage with the La Russa name from the building and scrubbed the La Russa name from its website and social media accounts. But Correia said ARF was given 90 days to complete those tasks. The family’s more immediate concern is to get access to their belongings.
The family also has taken issue with ARF’s suggestion that it initiated the separation. In a statement issued Wednesday, ARF said that its board, “after careful consideration,” voted March 1 to “officially separate from the La Russa family.”
Correia said she and the family was told there was no March 1 vote. “Several members have come to me, separately, and stated that no such vote occurred,” La Russa said. Indeed, Correia said, the La Russa family was present at the March 1 meeting, when they appealed to ARF’s board to “make meaningful improvements.”
ARF said that the meeting continued after the La Russas left the meeting, which is when the vote took place.
The bitter fall-out between the La Russa family and ARF became known this week. On Monday, ARF tried to put an upbeat spin on the split by issuing a press release, saying the parting of ways capped “30 years of a successful partnership” and was due to “ARF’s evolution and response to today’s challenges in animal welfare.”
La Russa hit back on Wednesday with a statement that showed that the split wasn’t at all amicable.
“Compassion and care for animals is our family’s passion,” La Russa said in his statement. “But ARF’s current leadership, policies and attitudes work against fulfilling its mission. We have concluded we must completely separate ourselves, our name and our reputation from ARF.”
La Russa, who retired from baseball in October, said that for years, the “close-knit culture” of ARF had been “like an extended” family — “like-minded people who shared a passion for animals” and “a bond of mutual respect and trust.”
“This culture was an important factor in ARF’s early and continued success,” La Russa said. “That is, sadly, no longer the case, which is why we no longer want to be associated with the foundation we created.”
The La Russa family first raised concerns about ARF’s leadership in April 2021 when the organization faced allegations that its executives nurtured a “toxic” workplace culture, rife with bullying, favoritism, retaliation and ageist and racist comments. The venerable Bay Area nonprofit was hit with four lawsuits filed by former and current employees who alleged that McCoy and ARF’s long-time executive director Elena Bicker “tolerated, engendered and permitted a toxic workplace culture.” One of those lawsuits has since been settled on undisclosed terms, while the other three are still pending, according to Contra Costa County Superior Court records.
La Russa, his wife and daughters resigned from the board that spring but agreed to remain loosely affiliated with ARF to aid in its fundraising efforts while the organization was supposed to make changes. The family also allowed ARF to continue to display the family’s sports and entertainment memorabilia to remind visitors of the organization’s beginnings and connection to a national sports celebrity.
Yet, the family’s concerns persisted. “The final straw,” they said, came last month, when ARF “mishandled” the Feb. 9 adoption of a dog named Lovebug. In their statement, the family said Lovebug escaped while being taken to its new home because ARF failed to provide the Chihuahua mix with a much needed harness. Over the next two weeks, the La Russas learned that ARF had halted several search-and-rescue attempts. A group of volunteers and members of the La Russa successfully set a trap for Lovebug. But instead of celebrating Lovebug’s rescue, ARF told a 20-year volunteer who had organized the rescue that her services were no longer needed, the statement said.
“This response to a person who has devoted 10-15 hours per week to the organization for 20 years, and fostered over 570 animals, is heartbreaking and unacceptable,” the La Russa family said. Correia said family members also had raised concerns about the Lovebug incident at the March 1 board meeting.
In a statement Wednesday, ARF did not address the leadership and workplace complaints, the Lovebug incident or the breakdown of its relationship with the La Russa family. Instead, the organization expressed its gratitude “to Tony and his family for their passion for animals and support of our organization over the years.”
Susan Lee Vick replaced Bicker as the organization’s top executive in January. In a brief statement Tuesday, ARF marketing manager Cole Kuiper said that Bicker’s departure had nothing to do with the 2021 leadership controversy and “was solely related to the fact she and her husband both planned to retire in 2022.”
The La Russa family founded the organization after a stray cat wandered onto the playing field during a 1990 game between the Oakland A’s and the New York Yankees. La Russa, then the A’s manager, and his wife learned the cat would likely be euthanized because the East Bay didn’t have a no-kill shelter and established an organization to rescue dogs and cats from high-kill shelters and help them be adopted into loving homes.
The organization’s mission and La Russa’s connections won ARF support from enthusiastic volunteers and famous friends in sports and entertainment who helped with annual fundraisers such as its annual Stars to the Rescue benefit. ARF soon grew into a preeminent Bay Area animal welfare nonprofit, responsible for more than 47,000 animal adoptions and operating out of a gleaming animal shelter, veterinary hospital and community center in Walnut Creek.