(Long Island, NY) A team representing Southampton Animal Shelter, located on the East End of Long Island, returned to the U.S. from a humanitarian animal rights mission in Puerto Rico with over one hundred rescue dogs via a private cargo plane at the Francis Gabreski Airport at 150 Riverhead Road, in Westhampton on Saturday, February 13, 2016 at approximately 12:00 PM. The dogs had been kept by the El Faro de los Animales Shelter in Humacao on the east coast of Puerto Rico, but it had become dangerously overcrowded. David Brownstein, a board member of the Southampton shelter, provided a private plane to transport the dogs.
“I am so pleased to be on this rescue mission, having just returned from another rescue trip to Costa Rica with my mother,” commented Elizabeth Shafiroff. “Volunteering to help dogs and animals be treated with dignity and respect is very important in our society.”
The Southampton team, including freelance press photographer and member of its Junior Committee Elizabeth Shafiroff, together with its Marketing Director Kate McEntee flew back to New York with the dogs. Other rescue organizations were invited to care for some of the animals until they are united with new homes. This is the third mission of its kind that the Southampton Animal Shelter and Mr. Brownstein have coordinated. Ms. Shafiroff is the daughter of International animal rights ambassador and fundraiser Jean Shafiroff, who is on the Shelter’s Honorary Board and will chair its annual summer gala for the fifth time in a row later this year.
