New York City veterinarian Ashraf Hussein, Alabama humane officer Mary Stanley Mosely Mansour, California broadcaster Jerry Cesak, sanctuary founder JP Novic, and eagle advocate Sandy Steers, as well as Canadian bee expert Sheila Rafaela Colla
Vet died on the job
Ashraf Hussein, DVM, 56, died from carbon monoxide poisoning inside the Low Cost Vet Mobile operated since 2009 by the Companion Animal Network in New York City, along with “a small white dog that Hussein had been operating on to remove a mass in the animal’s paw,” reported Rebecca White and Roni Jacobson for the New York Daily News.
Companion Animal Network founder Garo Alexanian, 73, “was found unconscious by neighbors who called 911 after he stumbled out of the van and collapsed on the sidewalk,” White and Jacobson continued.
“Alexanian told a woman who came to his aid that he and the victim had been trapped inside the van for hours,” White and Jacobson added, apparently after a snowplow packed the van into deep, heavy snow that also plugged the exhaust pipe and ventilation system.
Hussein assisted the Low Cost Vet Mobile project from inception, after his regular hours at the Aadobe Animal Hospital on Staten Island, where he lived with his wife Marwa Mansour, 46, and three sons.
“He didn’t care that he had to go out in the snow and the cold to go to work,” Marwa Mansour told the New York Daily News. “That’s how passionate he was with helping the animals.”
Garo Alexanian & the Low Cost Vet Mobile survived
“I lived by some miracle,” Alexanian confirmed to ANIMALS 24-7 a week later. “Will give details when stronger. Just got out of hospital after five days, due to hypothermia-related heart and kidney injury.”
Updated Alexanian on March 7, 2026, several days after getting the Low Cost Vet Mobile back into operation with other members of the Companion Animal Network veterinary team, “The carbon monoxide incident revealed a blockage in my heart, so they put in a stent. I have been in and out of hospitals for one month now. I was on the road to a heart attack at any time. So Dr. Hussein’s end of life lengthened mine.”
(See Wild Kingdom star Jim Fowler, 89: the truth behind the legend.)
Mary Stanley Mosley Mansour had outstanding cruelty case conviction record
Mary Stanley Mosley Mansour, 85, died on June 7, 2025, her daughter Laura Bowman posted to Facebook, but ANIMALS 24-7 only learned of her death nine months later.
Mansour, during eight years as executive director and humane officer for the Montgomery County Humane Society in Montgomery, Alabama, won convictions in 49 of the first 51 cruelty cases she took to court. Her 96% conviction rate was likely the best ever in the U.S. for any humane society or animal control division pressing at least as many cases.
Holding both city and county animal control contracts, the Montgomery County Humane Society was both.
Learned law enforcement on the job
Other Alabama humane society and animal control department directors alleged to ANIMALS 24-7 that weak humane laws and poor public attitudes kept them from laying cruelty charges in any but the most egregious cases, and even then they counted themselves lucky to get a conviction half the time.
Mansour came to the Montgomery County Humane Society as a public relations officer, after earning her college degree in zoology and going on to work with a variety of zoos and state wildlife departments as a wildlife rehabilitator.
She learned to do law enforcement work on the job, adding part-time deputy duty to her public relations workload and then keeping her eyes and ears open.
A good sense for public relations, she discovered, could help her considerably. The first secret of successful anti-cruelty law enforcement, Mansour found, was “just building a good relationship with other departments. If you’re there to help them, they’ll help you when you need them. We’ve built our relationships very carefully,” she said.
Uniforms
Learning to look and act like a peace officer was another essential step. When Mansour became executive director of Montgomery Humane, she remembered, “We started wearing our uniforms every day. We have them, and we wear them, and we faithfully wear the star” of animal control officers, “because we’ve found that uniforms are a must. We wear browns in county court and blues in city court,” she said, matching the uniforms of the sheriff’s department and police department.
“Wearing of uniforms, I’ve found, is very important psychologically,” Mansour emphasized, “both in getting the respect and attention of the general public and in maintaining our image with other branches of law enforcement. Uniforms are not that expensive to do. If you can only afford one uniform, you can take it home and wash it yourself every night––that’s what I did at first.”
Mansour and her staff rarely worked alone on cases that they thought might go to court.
“We work fairly closely with the police and sheriff’s department,” Mansour explained.
“We contact media”
“Unless an animal is dead or in extremis,” Mansour said, “we usually leave recorded citations with the offenders. Then, whenever possible, we call other departments such as the health department to back us up as witnesses. There are five of us, my deputy humane officers and me.
“If the case involves chronic abuse,” Mansour continued, “we swear out an affidavit instead of an arrest warrant to avoid false arrest suits. If there has been great damage to the animal, or failure to comply on the part of the offender, we go the arrest route.
“We contact all media on spectacular cases, and by getting coverage we usually find homes for the animals who are turned over to us in these cases; create a deterring factor for the other potential abusers in the area by showing that we will prosecute; and create pressure on reluctant judges by arousing the animal-loving public.”
Preferred charging misdemeanors
Contrary to the national trend, Mansour preferred to charge offenders with a misdemeanor, rather than a felony.
“When the offenses are misdemeanors,” she explained, “we’re in a court where the cases are less costly and easier to deal with all around. Bringing felony charges would not only bring more cost, but would also encourage defendants facing stiffer penalties to put up more resistance,” for instance by bringing in top lawyers and filing counter-suits.
Getting the maximum on a lot of misdemeanor convictions, Mansour believed, has more deterrent value than getting a light penalty imposed in a few felony cases.
Carried a gun
As the designated county humane officer, Mansour was the only member of the Montgomery Humane Society team authorized to carry a gun––and she did.
“I don’t carry it because of the animals,” she said. “It’s the two-legged animals I’m worried about. We go into some rough areas,” including the locations of dogfighting, cockfighting, and livestock theft rings.
After investigating an average of 450 cases a year, managing to deal with most of them out of court, Mansour noticed one big change.
“Today,” she said in 1993, “when we go through our jurisdiction on patrol,” she says, “we see fewer people to cite.”
Mansour lost her Montgomery Humane Society position in 2000, in part, she said, through the efforts of a prominent local attorney she had convicted of neglecting a dog.
Was not allowed to cite rodeo
“Humane societies have a major goal of achieving community approval, which translates into donations,” Mansour told ANIMALS 24-7, after retiring to Point Clear, Alabama.
“They are always loathe to rock the boat.”
For instance, Mansour recounted, “I was told repeatedly not to ever hassle the rodeo people. I always went to check, but was absolutely forbidden to interfere in any way by my board of directors.
“I can’t say this for all of them,” Mansour continued, “but many humane society boards are a joke. They boil down to society meetings that have absolutely nothing to do with preventing animal cruelty.”
(Clearwater Marine Aquarium)
Sunset Sam
Parallel to her Montgomery Humane Society career, working under her maiden name, Mary Mosely, Mansour took up the cause of Sunset Sam, 21, an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin who in 1984 was rescued from stranding in Old Tampa Bay, Florida, by personnel from the Clearwater Marine Aquarium.
Reportedly the first bottlenose dolphin in Florida to survive having been fully beached, Sunset Sam suffered from chronic liver disease.
Mary Mosely led an unsuccessful campaign during the late 1980s to return Sunset Sam to the wild. In response, the aquarium doubled the size of his tank.
Learning to paint with acrylics and to participate in therapy for disabled children, Sunset Sam lived for 17 years at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium. He died on December 4, 2001, at 21 years old, more than the estimated fifteen-to-sixteen-year estimated average lifespan of an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin, which includes high infant and adolescent mortality, but well short of the forty-to-sixty-year estimated maximum age of the species.
Jerry Cesak boosted California Proposition 2
Jerry Cesak, 74, “a Hall of Fame radio broadcaster known to millions as ‘Jer’ from the legendary Jeff & Jer Showgram,” on January 4, 2026 “died in the arms of his wife Pat from complications following a kidney transplant he had received in December 2025,” remembered host station KFMB in San Diego.
“Jerry and I connected 17 years ago,” recalled Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy president Wayne Pacelle, “well into the landmark campaign to pass Proposition 2 in California in 2008.
“Our farm animal protection campaign was abuzz with news from San Diego,” Pacelle said, “that the co-host of San Diego’s #1 radio show––which rarely dealt with hard news but specialized in laughter and entertainment––was repeatedly exhorting voters to pass Proposition 2 as a moral imperative to stop the extreme confinement of laying hens, pigs, and veal calves jammed in cages and crates barely larger than their bodies.
“Couldn’t believe our good fortune”
“I couldn’t believe our good fortune to have this immensely talented radio personality leveraging his platform to do this kind of persuasion,” Pacelle remembered. “His public discourse reached a crescendo just days in advance of the election when Jerry delivered a 15-minute persuasive oration worthy of America’s best trail lawyer in a court of law.
“Jerry put San Diego County on his broad shoulders and delivered a massive YES vote on Proposition 2. He and I were together on election night in Los Angeles and when the first returns came in, we knew it was going to be a landslide, especially in San Diego County.
“Looking back now,” Pacelle assessed, “the commanding win for Proposition 2 put the nation on a trajectory to start to unwind the cage era in animal agriculture. With Jerry helping spark the movement for more freedom of movement, we are now nearly halfway there in our question to eliminate gestation crates and battery cages.”
Cesak in 2012 “hosted an event for my book The Bond and filled a San Diego theater with 1,300 people there to hear him and me talk about our human relationship with animals,” Pacelle added. “He always dreamed big and bold for animals and scaled up our outreach.”
JP Novic cofounded CAPE sanctuary
Jan Polon Novic, 71, known as JP, cofounder of the Center for Animal Protection & Education farmed animals sanctuary in Ben Lomond California, “passed away peacefully at home on January 23, 2026, surrounded by her family, friends, dogs, music, and, as she insisted, stories and laughter,” her daughter Zoe Novic posted to Facebook.
“JP was diagnosed with multiple system atrophy, a rare neurodegenerative illness,” Zoe Novic told the Santa Cruz Sentinel. “She met her illness with strength and grace. Even in her final days, she continued to visit the sanctuary animals, finding delight and peace in the presence of those she spent her life protecting.”
Born in Redwood City, California, JP Novic “graduated from San Carlos High School in 1973, attended the University of California at Berkeley, and earned a degree in occupational therapy from the University of Puget Sound,” the Santa Cruz Sentinel continued.
(sierrajazzsociety.com photo)
Family part of cause
“After ten years working as an occupational therapist at Stanford Hospital,” the Santa Cruz Sentinel recalled, “she devoted her career to animal advocacy, working with the Palo Alto Humane Society and the Peninsula Humane Society,” co-founding the Center for Animal Protection & Education [CAPE] in 1992, continuing under the direction of daughter Zoe.
Survivors include JP Novic’s husband Josh Novic, M.D., a founding member of CAPE, who according to the CAPE website “has been committed to animal rights since his college days. While a neurology resident, he testified in the California senate in support of a bill to exempt interested high school students from participating in animal dissections. As a member of the Stanford Medical Ethics Committee, he published a letter in the New England Journal of Medicine criticizing the committee’s official report that attempted to justify the use of animals in medical experimentation.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Bald eagle nest monitor
Sandy Steers, 73, executive director of Friends of Big Bear Valley for more than 20 years, died of cancer on February 11, 2026.
Recalled Matthew Rodriguez and Joy Benedict of KCBS television news in Los Angeles, “A biologist by trade, Steers once owned a tech company and retired to the San Bernardino County mountains, where she began birdwatching. She said it was someone with the U.S. Forest Service who asked her to keep an eye out for the eagles.
“Steers helped launch the livestream cameras that offer a close-up look at the daily lives of [two Big Bear eagles] Jackie and Shadow and the eggs they have laid over the years.”
“Sandy Steers received a bachelor of arts in biology,” a Friends of Big Bear Valley biographical page said, “but it was not until she was a Galapagos Islands guide that her interest in birds really took flight. Sandy had been following the Big Bear bald eagles since she observed the first bald eagle chick in 2012.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Alerted the world to decline of bees
Sheila Rafaella Colla, 43, died on July 6, 2025, after a 20-month struggle with mesothelioma. Raised mostly in the greater Toronto area, Colla “spent her summers exploring the hilltops and vineyards of Veneto in the small Italian village where her grandparents farmed,” a memorial page mentioned.
Becoming a Ph.D.-holding entomology professor at York University in Toronto, “Sheila was among the first North American scientists to dedicate her work to the problem of native bee declines,” another online memorial site recounted.”
Colla was also “a co-founder of Bumble Bee Watch and a key partner of the Xerces Society and Wildlife Preservation Canada,” the memorial site said.
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They will all be much missed. May others follow their examples and carry on the extremely important work each of them had been doing!
Sharing with gratitude.
Each and everyone of these remarkable people has gone beyond the norm to call much needed attention to the near countless inhumane activities in which many thoughtless, or worse yet wilful, ways in which our species treats its animal brethren. They are truly inspirational.
The only way we can bring justice to bear on the continuing unconscionable treatment of animals farmed, wild and domestic is to have such persons as are here profiled bring others who might be inclined to join the battle with them to advance their cause. It appears that legislators who are in a position to change policy re animal care are only impressed with numbers – and money, of course.
These few capable and laudable persons are the best of our breed and I thank you for reminding us of their admirable work.