You Never Know When You’ll Go …

Four PETA Staff Members Who Would Want Us to Make OUR Lives Really Count!

Cherished and admired PETA staff Linda Tyrrell, Alisa Mullins, Jenny Woods, and Kenneth Montville lived this philosophy but died young.

LINDA: Dogged Defender

Linda would face down – or chase down – any animal-abusing bully, once jumping fences to apprehend a man who was beating a dog. When PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk was Director of Cruelty Investigations at the Washington Humane Society, Linda was a fieldworker, and together they drove the back alleys of the roughest neighborhoods in winter, looking for dogs left outside in the freezing cold. “Her persistence and determination ensured we ‘always got our dog!’” Ingrid recollects.

Later, as Director of Operations at PETA, Linda had the idea for PETA’s doghouse program, which provides free, custom-built shelters to dogs who otherwise would have no real protection from weather extremes and no law to require it. Linda led a team in building and delivering the houses throughout Virginia and North Carolina, spending every weekend and many evenings on the road. PETA’s doghouse program has since improved the lives of thousands of dogs left outdoors. (Sponsor a doghouse today.)

ALISA: Word Warrior

Alisa’s way with words could have made her a New York Times bestselling author. Instead, she chose to use her gift on behalf of animals – and her writing did, in fact, appear in the pages of The New York Times and many other top publications. With a keen sense of humor and wickedly witty wordplay, Alisa got millions of readers laughing – but, more importantly, thinking – about issues they might otherwise never have considered, like the irony of the Westminster Dog Show and Spay Day falling in the same month.

Alisa’s proudest achievement, though, didn’t involve writing but sitting. She participated in PETA’s famous sit-in at Calvin Klein’s offices in New York City, demanding that he stop using fur – and he did! Klein became the first major designer to ditch fur.

JENNY: Unstoppable Advocate

“Empathy personified,” as her colleagues described her, Jenny felt animals’ suffering deeply. She turned her feelings into unforgettable actions – from crashing Oscar de la Renta’s furry runway and going naked on The Howard Stern Show to giving chicken flesh peddler Frank Perdue a tofu cream pie in the face in a vaudevillian act that captivated the media and gave people the facts behind factory farming.

Despite her bold actions, Jenny shunned the limelight. Interviews – which she was often called on to do as the head of PETA’s Communications Department in the ’90s – made her anxious. But Jenny knew that animals needed her to speak out for them. So she practiced, took a deep breath, and spoke eloquently on national TV about PETA’s investigations and campaigns, including our push to end General Motors’ barbaric crash tests using pigs and ferrets. Jenny’s advocacy propelled PETA’s victory in that campaign, and live animal crash tests are now history.

KEN: Kind to the Core

Passionate about inspiring empathy, Ken was the creative force behind many of PETA’s innovative youth outreach campaigns, including Ellie the Elephant and Carly the Cow. These life-size, talking mechanical marvels have given over 180,000 elementary school students lessons in compassion. As the visionary behind PETA’s immersive virtual reality and AI experiences, including Abduction and “I, Calf” and “I, Chicken,” Ken lit a fire for animal liberation on college campuses across the US. Ken always stopped to scoop up injured crows and geese and save bees and worms from the sidewalk after it rained. As his wife, Rachelle – also a treasured PETA staff member – puts it, “Ken talked about how lucky he was to have spent the time he had working for PETA. It was more than a job; it was his life’s work. All he wanted was to make the world a kinder place.”

Linda, Alisa, Jenny, and Ken knew they were needed and vital in the push for animal liberation, and losing their advocacy means we have gaps to fill.

“ This is not your practice life.” – PETA UK Vice President Dawn Carr