Janet Brasco, 'rescue warrior' who helped found 2 Long Island animal nonprofits, dies at 91

Janet Brasco never said no to a creature in need, a “rescue warrior” who helped curtail widespread euthanasia in municipal pounds and cofounded what became two of Long Island’s biggest animal nonprofits.

She set up the League for Animal Protection in 1971, then left to form Last Hope in 1981, having ditched a bank job for an unpaid mission. In an era of lax standards on animal treatment, Brasco was among the few in the trenches, steeling her heart to approach pounds’ gas chambers to save animals, lobbying public officials and removing pets from abusive owners, family and friends said.

When she got peace officer status in 1976, the short, middle-aged woman was scared to go out at night to investigate cases, but the calling in her soul pushed her on, those who knew her said.

“She’s one of those people who never gave up, no matter what the odds were against her, no matter people trying to sue her and people calling her bad names,” said noted animal behaviorist Warren Eckstein, who was the league’s chief peace officer. “She was truly a rescue warrior.”

Brasco, of Huntington, died March 28 at age 91.

One of her favorite successes was the baby red robin she nursed at home after he was kicked around by children, recalled daughter Laurie Brasco, of Huntington.

“He used to fly out of the house and fly around all day, and then she’d call him when it was getting dark and he’d come in and sleep on the mantle on a paper towel,” her daughter recounted. “He was with us for years.”

An art degree graduate from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, Brasco had worked at a New York City library and for Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company bank.

Incentive to start league

She showed her basset hound at dog competitions, her daughter said, but just before age 40, her moment of enlightenment came after watching a documentary on abused animals and strays.

That was Brasco’s impetus to start the league, which branched with several chapters and rescued what she once said was more than 30,000 animals in 10 years. The nonprofit rented stores and houses as shelters. Every morning for years, her daughter recalled, Brasco popped open more than 100 cans of cat food at home and took them to The Grateful Paw, a Centerport house sheltering about 100 cats at one point.

As Brasco and fellow volunteers regularly plucked animals with minutes to live from municipal pounds, their activities inhibited the norm of euthanasia and eventually helped convince authorities to get rid of gas chambers, said Joanne Anderson, a former league volunteer and now Last Hope’s outreach coordinator.

“She was a force to be reckoned with and that’s what you had to be then because it wasn’t popular to be doing animal rescue,” Anderson said.

Resourceful, Brasco found ways to pay for care, despite nonprofit funds that rarely topped three figures, friends and family said. She collected daffodils and wildflowers from meadows to sell, held garage sales and opened a Last Hope thrift shop, her daughter said. In husband James Brasco, a former NBA player and bank employee she met in college, she had a lifelong donor.

“You can raise the money, you just can’t save the animal a month later — that was her model,” said Last Hope president Linda Stuurman, a college student when she got immediate help from Brasco for an injured cat.

Adopted dozens of animals

Brasco loved reading, especially Charles Dickens, and was an accomplished artist who created Last Hope’s holiday cards and painted her rescues’ portraits.

She also wrote about her cases in “Triptolemus Said,” self-published in 2001 with her animal doodles and named after a Greek hero who advised against hurting animals. In the book, her angst showed, like when she fed a family’s three neglected, outside dogs daily for more than a year and learned why one caged dog was missing: “The sun hadn’t shone on him and like a flower, he’d withered and died.” Her stories also gloried in miracles like Beaujack, a Great Dane who resembled an “X-ray” and grew into a healthy mascot for the league. 

Over the years, Brasco adopted more than 50 unwanted creatures, from dogs to ducks, and was still doing so after leaving Last Hope in 1991.

In a 2006 Newsday article about the nonprofit’s 25th anniversary, she talked about her short time with Adrian, an elderly Rottweiler abandoned when the car wash where she lived was sold.

“At least for her last year and a half,” Brasco said, “she had a home.”

A Mass was celebrated at Church of St. Patrick in Huntington on April 5, followed by burial at St. Patrick Cemetery. Donations may be made to Last Hope in Wantagh.