BY Phyllis Furman, Daily News Staff Writer
Monday, November 23rd 2009, 4:00 AM
When their beloved Siberian husky Maya slipped out the door and wandered off two months ago, Destiny and Marquis Rosado drove around their Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, neighborhood all night looking for her.
The next day, with Maya still on the loose, the couple stumbled on a new way to look for lost pets.
The Rosado family (Olivia, Marquis, Tristan and Destiny) of Brooklyn was thrilled when FindToto.com helped return their dog, Maya
A worker at a nearby Petco store recommended FindToto.com, an automated telephone service that can quickly identify and call neighbors to say a pet is missing and asks them to report any sightings.
The Rosados paid $175 to alert 1,275 people in the surrounding blocks that their black and white, blue-eyed husky was missing. Within two hours they got the call they’d prayed for: Maya was found.
“For someone you love, money is no object,” said Destiny Rosado, a 29-year-old dental assistant. “She is part of the family.”
Founded two years ago, FindToto has reunited 2,000 cats, dogs, birds and even a wallaby and goat with their owners nationwide. The critter-tracking service charges from $70 to call 250 homes to $875 to reach 10,000 homes. It claims a 70% success rate.
The idea to launch a pet-finding service came to FindToto.com founder Dustin Sterlino, a Brentwood, Calif., entrepreneur, after his own cat, Cutie McPretty, went missing, never to be found.
“Think of us as an Amber Alert for missing pets,” FindToto spokeswoman Colleen Busch said. “It takes us 15 minutes to call 1,000 of your neighbors.”
The calls are 30-second messages that begin, “This is a lost pet alert,” and include a description of the animal, the owner’s contact info and a Web address with pictures and additional details.
Calls go to landlines, but not to unlisted or mobile numbers. Because nothing is being sold, calls are not restricted by the federal Do Not Call registry.
FindToto has raised its profile by offering its services free to celebrities. The paw trackers recently tried to help Jessica Simpson track down her dog Daisy after she saw it snatched by a coyote. Daisy wasn’t found. Two other celebs had better luck: one-time “Baywatch” star Brooke Burns was reunited with her dog, Max, and Victoria’s Secret vixen Alessandra Ambrosio welcomed back her Maltese terrier, Buddha.
In Park Slope, Brooklyn, a heartbroken Christina Renzi, a 31-year-old quality control analyst at barnesandnoble.com, paid $300 for the service when her brown and black cat Baby recently ran away.
As it turned out, Renzi and Baby were reunited an old-fashioned way: A neighbor who’d seen a cat under a stoop spotted a flyer Renzi had posted with a picture.
Even so, Renzi said she’d recommend FindToto. “This allowed me to reach out to a large number of people I couldn’t have found myself. It is for someone who wants to exhaust every option.”
Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2009/11/23/2009-11-23_real_life_pet_detectives_webbiz_users_amberstyle_alerts_to_find_fido.html#ixzz0nrpOwWV7
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