25 years of emergency medical care for pets and financial assistance for their owners

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – The nonprofit dedicated to keeping pets pain-free started in 1999 and founders say one dog’s emergency care led to a chain of giving.

Laura Kelly, Vice President of The Roscoe Fund, has worked with pet owners to fund necessary animal care for 25 years. She said her role with the nonprofit began with euthanasia. Paul Hendrickson, who acts as a silent partner in the president role of the nonprofit, came to the clinic Kelly was working at to put down his dog, Roscoe.

Kelly said shortly after Roscoe’s death Hendrickson wrote a letter to their clinic, thanking them for their help – and started a chain reaction.

“He ended up writing a nice thank you, and he enclosed $300 for us to do something for other pets,” Kelly said.

Kelly operated the Roscoe Fund out of the clinic she worked in, as a vet tech, where she said pet owners often were in need of financial assistance. Seeing this unmet need ultimately created the Roscoe Fund.

“We talked about buying a piece of equipment or helping an animal and we called [Hendrickson] to come in and sit down with us and we decided we would try to make a fund to help pets in need,” Kelly said. “We did not want financial burdens to be the reason why we would have to put animals to sleep.”

Operated entirely by volunteers, the nonprofit doesn’t have a physical location. According to Amy Rosling, Treasurer for The Roscoe Fund, 100% of the donations or funding they receive goes toward vet patients in need.

Rosling said there aren’t strict limitations on who they help, describing their screening process as a case-by-case basis, one without a low-income requirement. Most of the services they fund are “life-saving procedures,” but both Kelly and Rosling said they’ve made exceptions. In the past, The Roscoe Fund has assisted with paying for pain medication, humane euthanasia, or helping elderly or low-income pet owners.

“We do ask if we use the fund on your pet that you pay it forward, whether that’s money back into The Roscoe Fund at some point, or helping somebody else with a pet,” Kelly said.

Rosling’s own role in the nonprofit stems from help she received with her own pet. Rosling said her Bernese mountain dog, Miley, needed some vet care at a time she couldn’t afford it when The Roscoe Fund helped her pay for some necessary services.

“I probably would have had to put my dog down had I not had that care because it was less expensive,” Rosling said. “So, this is my way of giving back. I don’t have tens of thousands of dollars to donate towards the fund, but I’m pretty good at fundraising.”

Kelly said throughout the years they’ve helped a variety of animals, including an iguana who escaped a house fire and a chinchilla Kelly kept as a pet after a good Samaritan rescued it, to name only a fraction of her animal interactions.

“I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you there was several times where I wanted to quit the fund,” Kelly said. “The time I mentioned I was closing the fund, I got very emotional because the community reached out and they were telling me ‘You can’t do that!‘ I realized I really can’t quit the fund because it really helps fill the gap.

“People really need this fund. They need the assistance and I think Anchorage and Alaska is such a community of animal lovers,” said Kelly

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