Friday, October 2, 2009

Safeway, apparently, hates my dog

It's the evening of day 2 since Raven ran away from our friend's backyard near Moorpark and Williams in San Jose.

No leads. Lots of well wishes, many very heartfelt (thank you), but no leads. feeling fatigued, frustrated and more than a little helpless. This is a huge area and I know we are doing all we can do and have the assistance of a number of people in networking and even a few helping with canvasing, but no matter how hard we work, we just can't force the outcome. We need luck, providence, and the assistance of some good samaritans or Raven is lost to us.

I had to work in the morning, but was out in the afternoon spreading the word . I went down to see the folks at valleywater.org (your friendly water district) and they were very receptive and helpful. Apparently they do find lost persons in those creeks. A man I ran into down there said just a few weeks ago their crews found a demented man wandering around in a watershed area who had been lost for 9 days. Still alive.


Later in the afternoon, I put up more posters, this time in the area bounded by Bollinger on the south, Stephen's Creek on the North, Lawrence on the East and Miller on the west. I didn't have much time but I did what I could. I also spoke with a number of people in this area who were walking about - all of whom were very sympathetic.

So - nearby on the corner of Miller and Bollinger there is a Safeway supermarket, and I think to myself - they get a lot of traffic; that would be a wonderful place to put a poster. But, as it turns out, Safeway has a policy that prohibits any community oriented postings. They have no bulletin board; not even a tiny crappy one hidden away in some back hallway. A woman at the store said that they used to let people tape lost dog posters on the window where people would see them while walking in and out. I ask the manger on duty if this might be possible or if there is any way that they could assist me but he quickly brushed me off saying that it's against store policy to post anything like that. It was clear that he didn't want to get in trouble with his boss. My conclusion is (surprise) that Safeway is interested in taking money out of the community, but not interested at all in giving anything useful back. I guess this isn't news (that Safeway is an impersonal corporate vampire). God forbid that love should ever get in the way of commerce. Perhaps I'm being harsh; I know I'm not objective about this, but still....

Driving home, I stopped at a nearby Indian food place for dinner - Tandoori Cafe I think. The food there was great and they had no problem with me taping a poster on the window.


1 comment:

  1. I'm glad someone suggested contacting the water district and that you already contacted them. When I was driving around the area today, I thought that might be a good place for a dog to hang out, but hard to get to for regular folk.

    I'm hoping you'll get good news soon.

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