For more than 15 years, Sara Archer’s name has been synonymous with the well-being of animals in need of care.

Leaving that behind at the end of this month is one of the most difficult decisions the executive director of the Blue Mountain Humane Society has made in her working life.

Archer was hired in January 2006 to take over the nonprofit at a time when things were tumultuous, board member Jayne McCarthy remembered.

Previous mismanagement had put the organization at risk of losing its nonprofit status, for instance, and there was a history of frustration and anger over how employee concerns were handled.

Outside the building, some of the community had grown cynical about the care of the animals inside the facility.

Bringing Archer in at that moment meant “rising out of the ashes to complete success,” McCarthy said last week.

“We were elated to find someone of her caliber.”

No one, however, could have envisioned what Archer would eventually achieve.

The first step from then to now began with the “most exciting and steepest learning curve” Archer had climbed.

Animal welfare was completely new to her, so she did then what she does now and began pulling in mentors from state and national animal organizations.

Archer joined other organizations that would help grow her leadership skills. She resourced with experts, made connections with shelters around the Northwest and beyond, and began painting a different picture of Humane Society work in the Walla Walla Valley.

Building community trust

To do so meant building a much bigger bridge to the community, Archer said.

Before that work could start, walls had to come down. For the first time, the Humane Society underwent an independent audit, not a small matter at about $8,000 a pop.

In a move that would become familiar, Archer asked animal fans to pay the tab. That first exam of the books came back clean and began a transformation of how people saw the organization. There has been a third-party audit every year since, always expensive and always worth the investment in community trust, she said.

That same first year, Archer bumped up fundraising efforts by starting the Fall Furr Ball. Making an annual event of dinner, dance and auction allowed people to have a good time while supporting a favorite cause. In 2006, about 200 people attended.

More than gold, however, was the value of staff and board seeing such tangible love for what they love — animals in need of homes.

“We could ride that high for a year. When you are getting dogs tied to trees and kittens in boxes left in front of the gate … It balances those moments that can be really heartbreaking.”

In 2019, the most recent live event, more than 600 guests gave over $200,000 to the Humane Society at the Furr Ball.

Not every new idea was readily accepted. Closing the shelter’s downtown thrift store, for example, caused an outcry.

“It was a very unpopular move, Archer said.

“For years that store created essential cash flow for the mission. But rising wages and rent meant it was budgeted to start losing money.”

That would have taken a financial toll on the mission of preventing cruelty and promoting kindness to animals, Archer said.

Under that guiding star, the shelter’s leaders headed for new horizons.

True to the mission

Archer found the payments on the building’s mortgage — about $400,000 then — onerous.

The organization lacked the cash flow for monthly payments, so she restructured the debt to have one annual payment due in the same month the nonprofit got grant money every year.

A few years later, Archer burned the mortgage papers in a celebration of paying off the whole debt.

The Walla Walla animal shelter was one of the first in the country to formalize home trials for adult dogs. The idea of a three-day home stay came about in brainstorming how to improve adoption retention rates, Archer said.

“To say, ‘Before you make a decision, take this dog home and see if it’s a good fit for your family.’ It has improved our successful adoption rate and decreased adoption returns.”

More good things came in a capital campaign launched in 2016 under Archer’s leadership.

“Unleashing a Brighter Future” ultimately brought in $1.2 million, enough to build much-needed storage, create a play park for shelter dogs and remodel the facility to add a fully-equipped surgical suite, new animal housing areas, office space and a community room. That work was completed in 2018.

Archer also brought the shelter’s contracted veterinarian, Ken Norris, on as a full-time medical director two years ago. That, she said, “made a whole bunch of other things possible.”

Such as the relationship Blue Mountain has with partner agencies — most in neighboring counties and states but some in farther-flung Oklahoma, Texas, California and Hawaii.

The network allows animals here to go elsewhere when that option offers a better shot at being adopted, and vice versa.

Archer’s first glimpse of what that can mean came when officials in Tri-Cities intervened in an animal hoarding situation.

By the time she became part of the rescue, more than 400 rescued miniature American Eskimo were rehoused in clean kennels. It was a mass of white fur, black noses and eyes, Archer recalled, laughing.

“It looked like an alien invasion.”

To have the opportunity to get a portion of the pups into homes here was really powerful, she said.

It prepared staff for the next large-scale rescue when, in 2017, about 90 guinea pigs were found in a Umapine field and brought to the shelter, soon joined by almost 200 more from the same household.

As tends to happen, many were pregnant. Staff scurried to convert a garage into a guinea pig dorm, where the furry herd quadrupled with new babies.

Yet each guinea pig — 370 by the end — was in a new home within a week, a community response that was affirming, Archer said

There is zero doubt in her mind that a focus on spaying and neutering animals is one of the biggest impacts of her time at the head of the Humane Society.

First, in ensuring every adopted animal is sterilized and, secondly, by operating a “trap, neuter and return” program for feral cats that has significantly reduced that population in Walla Walla County.

Changing minds

But it was when the organization made a decision to stop euthanizing animals for space — and found other shelters with the same plan — that this community’s perspective on animal care at Blue Mountain Humane Society truly changed, Archer recounted.

That meant building a network of families willing to foster cats and kittens when every crate was full and transfer animals to shelters with space to spare.

Again, that called for a community response to the need, something Walla Walla has never failed to do, she said.

McCarthy is sure it is Archer’s character that people respond to as much as it is the animals.

“Sara is the definition of integrity. And I think it is what has encouraged so many of her donors, people who are so proud of our institution.”

Ken Norris has seen Archer’s determination to help animals up close for a dozen years now.

“The transformation in animal care in that time is extraordinary,” the veterinarian said.

“We’ve been able to help animals in our care and in our community in ways I don’t think any of us had imagined we could do.”

This gig has allowed him to fulfill a mission and service, Norris said.

“I didn’t even know how passionate I was until I started at Blue Mountain Humane Society, at her invitation.”

While Walla Walla’s animal shelter is relatively small, it “punches above its level,” he noted.

“Our impact is pretty amazing, and that is directly due to Sara’s efforts.”

In 2020, animal welfare officials validated the work of Archer around the shelter’s volunteer crew when BMHS became the second shelter in Washington state to earn certification from Points of Light, the world’s largest organization dedicated to volunteer service.

Now, though, it’s time for someone else to have the new ideas, the grand plans, the drive to connect abandoned and surrendered animals to new owners.

“I made this choice for myself, with my husband and my family, to let go and let the organization find its new leader,” Archer said last week.

“The Blue Mountain Humane Society is not Sara Archer, it is a team of extraordinary and talented people who show up every day to do this work.

“I will be the loudest cheerleader as this organization continues in its mission in the lives of people and pets.”