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A California girl's crusade has put dogs in bulletproof vests nationwide. But her mom works for a vestmaker.
By MIKE BRASSFIELD
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 17, 2000
All over the country, including both sides of Tampa Bay, little girls are raising money to buy bulletproof vests for police dogs.
Many of them have been inspired by a girl in California who was saddened by the death of a police dog and started her own "Vest-a-Dog" non-profit fund.
Stephanie Taylor, 11, has been on Oprah and in People magazine and in Chicken Soup for the Preteen Soul. The heartwarming media coverage has fueled a fast-growing national crusade. Thanks to private citizens collecting donations, hundreds of police dogs are getting custom-fitted body armor.
There's just one catch. Stephanie's mother happens to be the national sales manager of a company that makes bulletproof vests for police dogs.
The daughter's charity funnels donations through the mother's corporate sales office. One critic calls it "a huge conflict of interest."
Stephanie's mother disagrees, but she knows the arrangement could look self-serving: "Six years ago, dog vests weren't selling."
All of this raises an ethical question: Is this dog-vest crusade the result of good intentions or clever marketing? Or both?
Bulletproof dog vests have been around since the mid 1990s, but the idea didn't really catch fire until last year. Sales are surging. The vests, which cost $450 to $1,000, are just now becoming commonplace in the Tampa Bay area.
Some canine officers worry that the vests are hot and cumbersome and limit dogs' mobility and endurance. St. Petersburg police turned down free vests.
Law enforcement agencies aren't buying the vests. Animal lovers are.
Locally, two 10-year-old girls have been collecting money. Their only motive is to protect the dogs.
Courtney Demmi of Town 'N Country acquired 26 dog vests for the Pinellas and Hillsborough sheriff's offices, the Clearwater and Tampa police departments and the Florida Highway Patrol.
Stacie Hillman, an Orlando-area girl, wants to strap a vest on every police dog in Florida. She has bought 25, including two for Largo, but got turned down by St. Petersburg. She started after reading about Stephanie Taylor in Time Magazine for Kids.
Stephanie Taylor's charity, Vest-a-Dog, operates out of a San Diego suburb.
Its Internet site seeks to enlist schools and civic groups to raise money in their communities. Since June 1999, the fund has used donations to buy about 100 vests from International Armor Corp., which claims to be the No. 1 dog vest seller. Bulletproof vests are $475, stab-proof vests $650.
Questions have been raised about Vest-a-Dog because Stephanie's mother, Kathleen Ryan, is in charge of sales for International Armor.
"It doesn't sit right with me that people would exploit a child to promote a business," said Kris Willis, a San Diego-area woman who says she has bulletproofed 76 dogs. Willis used to buy her vests from Ryan before switching to another company.
"She saw the publicity and the profits to be made. That's when she turned her daughter into a non-profit and took the campaign nationwide," Willis said. "I guess the dogs are winning in the long run, but there's a right way and a wrong way."
Ryan says she's disheartened by such criticism. She says Vest-a-Dog is nothing more than her daughter's innocent effort to protect dogs and, surprisingly, it took on a life of its own.
"It's just one of these fluky little things," Ryan said. "It snowballed."
They don't call media outlets to scrounge for publicity; instead, Ryan said, the media call them.
Ryan says she makes no secret of where she works, and she used her own money to start the charity. But she acknowledges that, as an International Armor employee, she benefits from vest sales.
"That's not why this program was started," Ryan said. She says her daughter read about Solo, a New Jersey police dog killed in 1998. New Jersey humane societies were raising money for vests, and Stephanie wanted to do the same for one police dog in her town.
"Go ahead," Ryan says she told her daughter, "but it might be kind of difficult."
The girl put donation boxes in pet stores, called her local newspaper and raised $3,000 in a month.
Since then, Vest-a-Dog has mailed out pointers to about 2,000 people interested in starting their own campaigns. Ryan says that she does this at her own expense and that people are free to buy dog vests from any of the handful of companies that make them.
"Believe me, a lot of dog armor companies are benefiting from Vest-a-Dog," Ryan said.
In fact, the two girls raising money in the Tampa Bay area get their vests from different companies.
Courtney Demmi buys $450 "K-Max" body armor from Protective Products International in Sunrise. After raising $12,000, Courtney has hit a dead end because the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office no longer has time to accept checks for her, and her family can't afford to set up a non-profit group.
"If it fizzles out, at least she's done more than other children," said her mother, April Demmi.
Stacie Hillman buys $700 vests from Second Chance, a Michigan body armor company that branched out to dogs in 1994. Sales have risen from five to 30 dog vests a month.
Stacie started a charity, Pennies to Protect Police Dogs, in March. The police chief of her hometown, Casselberry, is on its board.
The bespectacled, soft-spoken 10-year-old crisscrosses Central Florida to raise cash at weekend festivals. Stacie leaves milk jugs in veterinary offices and pet stores. She hits up corporate donors. She can recite, from memory, the technical specifications of a 4-pound Kevlar ballistic dog vest. She has raised $20,000 in six months.
All because she read about Stephanie and Solo.
"It made me feel bad because police dogs protect us, and we should protect them," Stacie said.
"She has no ulterior motive," said her aunt, Jacalyn Moore. "She loves dogs."
Stacie was recently at Largo City Hall, rolling around with German shepherds Rebak and Cubo as they modeled their new body armor.
Largo canine officer Ed Sohoski admitted having doubts when he first heard of the vests.
"My impression was the dog would always be in the vest," Sohoski said. "It's very easy for the dog to overheat, vest or no vest."
But the vest will come out of the car trunk only in particularly dangerous situations.
"We don't allow the dogs to wear them for long periods of time, and have not had any trouble with heat," said Punta Gorda canine officer James Nichols Jr., president of the U.S. Police Canine Association.
Typically, one or two of the nation's 8,000 police dogs die in the line of duty every year, but it's not clear how many are shot. Some get hit by cars while chasing suspects. Police departments spend tens of thousands of dollars buying and training dogs. But many departments aren't going to squeeze vests into their budget, and some doubt they are practical.
"They're a good handle for someone to grab onto if they want to fight the dog," said Gary Swart, head of St. Petersburg's canine squad.
Also, it's rare for dogs to be shot in the torso; they will come at a gunman head-on. Even Solo, the police dog whose death started this grass-roots movement, was killed by a shot to the head.
St. Petersburg's 12 police dogs share one vest.
Swart's main worry is the risk of heat exhaustion.
"It's like putting a fur coat on them, and they've got fur coats to start with."
-- Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.