Someone You Should Know: Animal Rescue Driver
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Every week, he drives hundreds of miles to save pets that have been abandoned by their owners.
His name is Nick Graziano. CBS 2's Harry Porterfield says he's someone you should know.
Early each Tuesday morning, Graziano leaves his Bloomingdale home and heads for downstate Champaign. There, Graziano's van will be filled with dogs brought up from the South to spare them from being euthanized.
He's a volunteer transporter with Illinois Animal Rescue.
"They come from Indiana, Kentucky, Georgia, all the southern areas down there, some from Florida," Graziano says. "They just keep on coming."
Graziano says high prices are causing owners to choose between putting food on the table and maintaining their pets.
Graziano will travel a distance of 400 miles before he returns home. Along the way, other volunteer transporters will meet him for the transfer of selected animals.
When not a volunteer, he operates an Internet toy business through Happytoy depot.com.
The dogs will be relocated either to individuals or to no-kill shelters, where they will stay until adopted out. Pat Bianco is vice president of Illinois Animal Rescue.
"We're doing the best we can," Bianco says. "There are so many of them out there, they're just everywhere. People just let them loose."
Graziano has been a transporter for the past six years, and during that time he estimates he has carried more than 1,200 animals a year to a better life.
Graziano's Tuesday odyssey ends at Huntley, where his remaining passengers are transferred. Looking back, he smiles as he says he has never been bitten by any of the animals.
"I feel like I'm helping somebody that doesn't have a chance and sometimes you hope in life it comes back to you," he says.
