Rescue center owner puts passion for pit bulls into show

PIT BULLS & PAROLEES. 10 p.m.

Saturdays, Animal Planet.

SANTA CLARITA, Calif. - Tia Torres has a passion for underdogs - whether they're people or animals. The star of Animal Planet's series, "Pit Bulls & Parolees" has proven that for the past 17 years since she established the Villalobos Rescue Center here, the largest pit bull rescue facility in the United States. She started taking in refugee pit bulls and later parolees who were having trouble finding work.

The redheaded Torres, dressed in denims and a black sweatshirt against the fall chill, manages 200 pit bulls on 10 acres of dusty desert property. Her daughters, Mariah and Tania, help out, as well as her two adopted twin sons, Kanani and Keli'I.

"I was at an animal shelter up in the high desert with a friend, and she was getting a collie out, she was with collie rescue. It was then when the sheriff's department were bringing in some dogs. It was a drug deal gone bad," she said, seated on a folding chair under a pepper tree.

"Out in this area there are a lot of meth labs and everybody had been killed on the property. And the only thing that was left was one pit bull. They brought her in because she was evidence," she recalled.

"They had tied her ears off with fishing line. And it stopped the circulation and the ears just fell off. The fishing line was still in her ears. When the shelter brought her in she broke loose and ran toward my daughters. They were both sitting on a bench and she knocked them over and I thought, 'Oh, oh.' And the next thing I knew she was kissing them all over the place. So I decided to get her. It took me a while because there was a court case, but I finally got her and she was the inspiration for the whole place. Tatanka was her name."

Back then pit bulls were considered satanic dogs, she said. "It was hard to get them out of a shelter. No one wanted to save them, everybody hated them. So it was tough. Thankfully I was able to build up a decent relationship with animal control and worked my way up the ladder."

During Hurricane Katrina about 50 dogs were sent to Torres. "It hit us hard, so recently we went to New Orleans to see where our dogs came from and were really taken with the people there. You feel it and we fell in love with the people and with their animals and we made a promise to not forget about them."

Torres has been married three years to a man she met when they became pen pals while he was in prison. He's back in prison, charged with stealing property in a mix-up with another parolee, she said.

"It's hard when you deal with pit bulls and parolees. People go, 'What? I don't want to donate to that.' But they fit together. You spend five minutes with them, you wonder what's the fuss?"

One of the parolees is Armando Galindo, who's been working at the center for three years. Galindo never had a pet when he was growing up. But he discovered an affinity for the dogs - all of whom he knows by name. And he stayed on. "I went from being penniless," he said, "to owning my own home."

Galindo was in jail for forging checks, but the opportunity to work with the firefighters in a fire camp changed him, he said. "I got so much pleasure from people saying, 'Thanks so much for helping us,' that I wanted to feel that again."

Torres not only contends with her neighbors, who don't like the barking dogs, but with law enforcement. "It's a tough battle here. We get harassed by law enforcement a lot," she said, waving her black-tipped nails in the air. "We get phone calls from law enforcement from all over the country. They love us, except right here in our own county [Los Angeles County]. They hate us."

It was not Torres' idea to do a television show. When it was first suggested she just laughed. "Back in '99 I started a program for L.A. City. I became their contracted dog trainer, and all the dogs were pit bulls. And it was free to the public. One of my students had a pit bull and was a producer in the music industry.

"He had an eye, and three or four years ago he said, 'I love what you're doing with the dogs.' He started filming for his website. Then he suggested a TV show. Then L.A. Weekly magazine heard about the program, an article came out, and the next thing I know production companies are saying, 'Hey, we want to make a TV show.' "

As much as she loves them, not all dogs can be retrained, said Torres. "I'm not one of these 'humaneiacs.' Not every dog can be saved and every person can't be saved. Pit bulls are pretty solid dogs. The one thing we don't tolerate is the human aggression. You have to think back where they came from. Petey from 'The Little Rascals' was a pit bull. The Buster Brown dog was a pit bull. So they're supposed to love kids and people and they were the all-American dog in those days, and we want to keep that image alive."

For more information on the rescue center, call 661- 268-0555.