On a Monday night in early March, Robert Balogh and a friend drove an hour and a half from Van Nuys to Oxnard to meet an elusive man in a Best Buy parking lot.
The man, 35-year-old Anthony Nunez Jr. of Oxnard, emerged from an older model red Ford Ranger and handed Balog a thick black bag. Inside were the decomposing remains of Balogh’s beloved pet, a short-haired American tabby cat named Stevie.
Balog drove Stevie home and rolled down the windows to reduce the smell in the car. “He’s just grateful they got him back,” he said.
Robert Balogh has the box containing the remains of his late cat, Stevie, finally returned to him.
(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times)
Nunez and her partner, Nezyreth Velasquez, run We Care Pet Cremation, which offer To pick up, cremate pets and return ashes in Los Angeles, Ventura, San Bernardino, Kern and Orange Counties. Clients said Nunez and Velasquez spend their days driving around to pick up dead animals.
The company claims, “We Care Pet Cremation only offers truly private cremation in a state-of-the-art new machine that has separate chambers with separate doors.” on its website, “It is our mission to provide an affordable, personalized, detailed and dignified private cremation for your loved one.”
But We Care does not have a state-of-the-art crematorium; According to the owner of one such company, it takes animals to other companies’ facilities for cremation. And after taking the animals, they often don’t return the cremated remains, several customers said.
Several people who spoke with the Times had nearly identical experiences with the company: Nunez or Velasquez would pick up their pet at any time of the day, collect payment through Zelle and return with the ashes in two to three weeks. Promised to return.
Then, as weeks and months passed, Nunez and Velasquez stopped responding to customers. They kept the money and, in most cases, blocked their customers’ calls.
Balog shows Stevie his tattoo. He says the cremation service he used for Stevie took his payment, then harassed him for weeks.
(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times)
“I feel like I’ve been swindled on the worst day of my life,” Balogh said in an interview. “At best, they are a terrible business that is in over their heads, simply picking up animals and not being able to process them. At worst, they are scammers.”
Balogh, 44, raised Stevie with her friend Tori, who declined to share her last name for fear of retribution from We Care. Tori and Balogh were able to retrieve Stevie’s decomposing body after harassing We Care via calls and texts from different numbers and leaving several negative reviews online.
Tory also made public instagram video The incident was described and posted about it in cat rescue groups on Facebook. The online post caught We Care’s attention, Tory said, and the company agreed to meet in the Best Buy parking lot. When Balog picked up Stevie he had not been cremated, although Núñez claimed that he had been cremated.
In retrospect, Tory said, he should have suspected that We Care was not legitimate. “There were some really funny things in there, but I thought maybe I was being overly critical,” she said. Nunez took Stevie in a “random car”, despite advertising black car service, and only accepted payment of $560 through Zelle – a mechanism that does not allow users to stop payment or easily get a refund. gives.
“We are both distressed, we are grieving and we are troubled. Stevie is like my first child,” she said. But as time passed, she realized the gravity of the situation she was in.
“Their communication is very consistent and responsive when you start talking to them,” he said. “Then as soon as you pay them, they don’t respond or it takes a lot of time for them to respond. I just had a strange feeling.
When Tori found out several times, she confirmed her fears reviews online Details of such horror stories. “Don’t call this place if you love your pets,” one reviewer wrote on Google a month ago. “They are nice in the beginning but once they collect the money and your loved ones you will never hear from them again. …You’ll never see your pet again!!!”
Nunez agreed to an interview with The Times and scheduled a phone call via text message. At the beginning of the call, they said they had to reschedule for the next day. When the next day came, calls and texts to his number were blocked.
Tori has helped other pet owners get their pets’ bodies returned. She sent messages to Yelp users who left negative reviews instructing them to contact We Care with different phone numbers and sending persistent calls and texts to get their attention.
After persistently contacting We Care about her cat, which had been picked up a month earlier, 23-year-old Gabrielle Real of Hollywood finally got a clue as to what Nunez and Velasquez were doing with the dead bodies.
She told Real that her chocolate point Siamese cat Hella was in a Long Beach crematorium called Furever Friends. The owner of Furever Friends, who declined to be identified for this article out of fear of receiving calls from We Care customers, confirmed that he had a contract with We Care to perform third-party cremations.
Balrog with his cat Khaleesi.
(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times)
She has terminated the contract, she said, and We Care has taken back the ashes of all the pets she hired to cremate.
According to multiple sources, We Care dropped off 50 to 80 dead pets at Furever Friends, with no contact information for the pet owners.
Real shared the name of Forever Friends with Tori, who told pet owners she had been in touch with that their animals’ ashes could be there. The owner of Furever Friends began receiving distressed phone calls from We Care customers and was able to find the bodies of their pets at his facility.
Real got her cremated pet back from Furever Friends just one month after hiring We Care. He never got his $309 back.
The owner of Furever Friends, which runs a legitimate pet cremation business, said pet owners should do proper research before choosing a company to take in and care for their loved one.
Customers interviewed by the Times said they paid for their pets’ ashes as well as gifts to We Care, but received nothing of them. For example, Jacqueline Alonso, 36, said she paid $227 for her package, which was supposed to include a paw print mold of Spot, her chihuahua and another gift.
She chose We Care, she said, because the funeral service she used for her last pet was not available, and We Care offered pet transportation 24/7.
“That moment when your pet dies, your head is everywhere,” she said. “They put Spot in the trunk and took him away.”
She wouldn’t have gotten her pets’ bodies back if it weren’t for Tori, she said, who told her Spot might be in Forever Friends. She picked up Spot’s ashes in Long Beach six weeks after We Care collected Spot’s ashes.
During those six weeks, We Care gave her several excuses, including travel and family emergencies. “They play ping-pong with you and nothing happens,” Alonso said. “What they’re doing is disgusting, and they still have the audacity to lie to your face.”
Alonso, who lives in Huntington Park, never got his souvenirs or money back. But she said the most important thing was finding Spot’s bodies in Furever Friends. “My sweet little boy was there,” she said.
Stevie was never sent to Forever Friends, Tori said. They believe Nunez and Velasquez have a refrigerated facility in Oxnard where they are keeping the bodies. “They’re pocketing the money and hoarding the pets,” Tory said. “Do they know what kind of emotional distress and trauma they are causing people?”
Tori felt the worst when she stopped hearing from We Care – that they had abandoned her pet in a trash can or on the side of the road somewhere.
The Times contacted We Care from a number other than the one apparently blocked by Nunez, and requested its business. It responded quickly to arrange for the pet to be transported. The company is also now operating under a new name, Honorable Animal Aftercare, according to Tory, who saw that name on its invoices.
“They’re not stopping,” said Tori, who is considering her next steps. “I don’t want this to happen to anyone else.”
