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Problems have been festering at OC Animal Care (OCAC, the county shelter) since 2022, with Monica Schmidt as Assistant Director. Earlier this year, the county bureaucracy obliviously promoted her to director.
Schmidt’s grasp of animal sheltering is fuzzy. She is laser-focused on political maneuvering and glossy public relations rather than on animal care. Schmidt’s “facts” are often false and her numbers incorrect. The result? The shelter is declining, but the Board of Supervisors lives in a bubble of Schmidt’s fables.
To understand the shelter’s predicament, we examined Schmidt’s resume and employment applications. We checked Schmidt’s claims against news outlets, organizational newsletters, and published statistics. We found major discrepancies.
In her resume, Schmidt describes her first job as “August 2008 – June 2019, Shelter Operations and Public Relations Manager, Houston Humane Society”.
But there is no position with the title “Shelter Operations and Public Relations Manager” at Houston Humane. Schmidt is artfully glossing over how limited her experience really was.
We cannot tell what entry level position Schmidt may have occupied from 2008 to January 2012, but the Houston Chronicle’s coverage of Houston Humane never mentions her. On February 5, 2012, the Chronicle quotes Schmidt for the first time, seemingly as a spokesperson. From 2012 until June 2015, the Chronicle describes Schmidt as “spokesperson” or “spokeswoman”. From June 2015 to December 2016, the Chronicle continues to quote Schmidt under the interchangeable titles of “public relations manager,” “spokesperson,” or “spokeswoman.”
In Spring 2017, the Houston Humane Society newsletter cites her for the first time as “shelter operations manager”. The Houston Chronicle also cites her in that role on December 18, 2017, and on October 11, 2018.
Schmidt left Houston Humane in June of 2019. In summary, she spent most of her time at Houston Humane in either an unnamed entry-level job or in public relations, and her operations stint lasted only two years (mid 2017- mid 2019).
In newsletters in 2018 and 2019, Houston Humane’s four-person leadership team does not include Schmidt. Non-profits like Houston Humane file annual tax forms that list key employees, including those earning $100,000 annually. Schmidt never appears as a key employee in the tax filings.
Schmidt lists her next job as “June 2019 – April 2020, Chief Operating Officer, RPM” [Rescued Pets Movement].
This is another title that does not appear in the documents we found. RPM’s official Facebook posts initially describe Schmidt as chief development officer – a title indicating Schmidt worked in fundraising. From Houston Humane to RPM, Schmidt appears to have moved from operations to fundraising.
A few months later, Schmidt is described by RPM as chief of operations – but never as “Chief Operating Officer”. The words may sound similar, but the jobs are not. A car mechanic is not a mechanical engineer.
Like Houston Humane, RPM never listed Schmidt as a key employee in its tax filings.
Schmidt’s entire RPM stint, curiously, lasted less than a year, ending in April 2020 under unknown circumstances. That same month, she applied at OC Animal Care. Her resume implies she was unemployed at the time she was interviewed by OCAC. (There’s a 6-month unexplained void, May-October 2020, between RPM and OCAC.)
The discrepancies between Schmidt’s claims and reality extend to her supposed accomplishments. We provide a sample here and reserve more for another occasion.
At Houston Humane, Schmidt boasts of “assisting 50,000+ animals annually”. The reality? In 2019, Houston Humane intakes of dogs and cats totaled only 3,245.
This organization also runs a low-cost clinic, but Schmidt was not involved in the clinic operation. Schmidt may be trying to take credit for somebody else’s work, but even the clinic numbers do not add up to Schmidt’s claim. Schmidt just invented an impressive-sounding number.
Schmidt also claims she “developed policy recommendations and implemented strategies to increase save rate from 40-50% annually on average to over 90% annually”. We searched far and wide for any statistics that would match Schmidt’s numbers.
We could find no such statistic applicable to Houston Humane. We found only this citation from RPM (where she worked briefly, after she left Houston Humane): “[RPM] was instrumental in helping BARC [the Houston municipal shelter] achieve its ‘no-kill’ status and a live release rate of 95.6% in 2020, up from 42.6% in 2012”. It matches the numbers Schmidt gave. But this is an improvement in BARC (assisted by RPM), not Houston Humane. The improvement happened gradually, and Schmidt only joined RPM (in a fundraising role, as we showed earlier) at the very end. This appears to be another Schmidt claim for which we could find no substance.
There’s more, but you get the idea.
The cost to the taxpayer? The county pays Schmidt $210,558 in base salary. Including benefits, that’s about $300,000. By our rough estimate, Schmidt may have tripled her salary in just 4 years in OC, as she lowered the shelter’s standards. Modestly paid staff at OCAC right now have far better animal sheltering qualifications than Schmidt.
Who were Schmidt’s promoters? Dylan Wright and Cymantha Atkinson (OC Community Resources) and Supervisor Katrina Foley and her staff. We assume that they just loved Schmidt’s public relations experience. We assume OCCR bureaucrats and Foley’s staff are indifferent to the shelter’s problems documented in a Grand Jury report and community research.
In 2024, OC Community Resources promoted Schmidt even though her 3.5 years in OC were marked by a long series of grave misrepresentations. This is just a sample: A falsified safety record. Animal statistics that don’t even add up, as if animals vanish into thin air. A so-called “Fact Checker” document that was fantasy fiction. Schmidt’s latest whopper is her claim that the shelter is fully staffed, when it has only one third of the required animal care attendants its own consultants calculated from industry standards. We reserve a full accounting of Schmidt’s disinformation for another occasion.
Is this propaganda what Dylan Wright, Cymantha Atkinson, and Katrina Foley’s staff wanted from Schmidt? Schmidt’s focus is public relations and political maneuvering – not animal welfare. Schmidt hides problems (many of her own making) rather than work to solve them.
Politics and PR fairy tales aren’t going to clean kennels, care for the animals, make adoptions happen, or serve the community. The shelter’s Strategic Plan has a blueprint for a good shelter, but Schmidt, unable to even grasp it, did a 180-degree change, sending the shelter into disarray.
County departments should be run by experienced leaders with deep operational knowledge – not by self-promoting hacks keen on smoke and mirrors. Urge the Board of Supervisors to act and sign up for forthcoming updates on OCShelter.com
Michael Mavrovouniotis is a retired academic researcher and data scientist who also served as Director of Research at an investment firm. He holds a Ph.D. in Engineering from M.I.T.
Opinions expressed in community opinion pieces belong to the authors and not Voice of OC.
Voice of OC is interested in hearing different perspectives and voices. If you want to weigh in on this issue or others please email opinions@voiceofoc.org.
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