Maria Arsenijevich saw a flash of fur poking out of a yellow plastic tub. At first she thought it was a toy. There's was no sound, no movement. It couldn't be alive. It had to be a stuffed animal.
She was sitting in the family room at the back of a "humongous" Lincoln Park home early last March. The crew of two workers from her company, Clearing Chaos — don't call them "cleaners," they are professional organizers who specialize in decluttering and dealing with hoarders — were separating the possessions of a tenant being kicked out of her rental home. Boxes and cartons were piled 6 feet tall. Piles of junk. They were two hours into a seven-day job.
The tenant was a doctor, Anita Damodaran, 38, a pediatric physician with two young children.
"Very charming," said Arsenijevich. "A very nice lady. Hoarders are usually extremely intelligent and very nice."
Damodaran was helpful, assisting the Clearing Chaos workers, pointing out which possessions were hers and should be shipped to Florida, where she was moving. What should be donated, what thrown away. Even doing some of the work herself.
"She took this whole tower of crates and held on to a black and yellow one and was dragging it to the door to get it outside to the deck," said Arsenijevich. "I turned around to see what she was doing and saw a furry something poking out from below the yellow lid. I thought, 'It's a stuffed animal, bursting out. Because there are too many of them in the tub.' There was never any noise. No whimpering, no barking. She goes a little farther, and now I'm seeing three-quarters of a face. I wasn't sure it was a face — one side was matted with fur. The dog was popping its head out of the tub. The top was raising. I was fixated on the dog.
"My brain was saying, 'That's a stuffed animal.' I'm staring at this thing, and my mind's going, 'Something's not right here.'"
What was not right here was that Betty, a Portuguese water dog, had been confined to that plastic tub, a veterinarian later estimated, for about a month. Her weight had fallen from about 40 to 19 pounds. She was near death.
Damodaran dragged the box away. That had to be a toy, Arsenijevich told herself, again.
Then her assistant started to scream.
"Oh my God, oh my God!" one of her crew yelled. "It's a dog! It's a dog! It's alive!"
Arsenijevich raced over.
"I thought it was a standard poodle. Just sitting in the crate, its legs in front, very rigid, like a statue," she said. "No movement."
She started barking orders at her crew. One — who didn't want to use her name — was sent to the kitchen to get water. Arsenijevich called MedVet, the emergency animal hospital at Belmont and California. They told her to find a blanket and use it as a stretcher.
And Damodaran?
"She's in shock," said Arsenijevich. "She hasn't said anything. She's in disbelief. Then she started crying. She was very upset."
Incredibly, the dog, named Betty, could walk, led by Arsenijevich's other worker, Sherri Deckert.
"Sherri comes walking in with Betty on a leash. Perfectly silent. [Betty] looked so noble and gracious."
They bundled her out to their car and raced to the animal clinic.
"This dog could die at any moment," said Arsenijevich. "I'm in the driver's seat. Every time I stopped at a stop sign, I would look over, and the dog would look straight in my eyes. I fell in love with Betty. 'You're OK now,' I said. 'You're going to be fine.' I breathed into her nostrils — I know from living with dogs, that comforts them, so she can smell me."
They'd called ahead. MedVet staff were waiting at the curb when they showed up. "Put your masks on," the doctor from MedVet — which would not comment on a patient — said. "This dog is toxic."
Betty reeked of ammonia.
After dropping the dog off, Arsenijevich wasn't sure what to do.
"I'm afraid of what to say and not to say," she recalled "I don't know — she could sue me."
Animal abuse is a vastly underreported crime — usually the perpetrator is the only witness. Bystanders are reluctant to get involved. Arsenijevich didn't want to rat out a client. Her worker made the decision for her.
"Sherri called me and said, 'I'm sorry, Maria. I had to file a report.'"
Arsenijevich and her crew never went back to the house to finish the job.
"I've been at this 17½ years," she said. "It was the most horrific day of my career."
The legal system gears started to turn. Chicago police went to the home, but Damodaran had taken her two children, ages 1 and 4, and moved to Florida. Nine months passed. In December, police arrested her at her Tampa home and extradited her back to Illinois to face justice.
Betty, meanwhile, ended up at the Hinsdale Humane Society, which paid her $6,000 vet bill.
"She was with us, from Medvet on the 11th of March," said Jodie Arquilla, president of the Hinsdale Humane Society. "She went into a foster home — truly angels on earth. They gave her around-the-clock care, mentally and physically."
Betty was adopted in June.
"She is a happy, healthy, bouncy dog," said Arquilla. "You would never know that this happened to her. It's a credit to her resiliency and spirit, and the work that our foster home put into her, which is just incredible."
Damodaran’s case creeps through the courts. The questions: How did this happen? Was it intentional? Could it have been some kind of horrible oversight?
"There is no way you could have not known," said Arquilla. "Betty would have been screaming for the first week. Who knows how long before she gave up making noise. There is no way it would escape notice."
We'll pick up the story Friday, in court.
