12/08/2024
If everyone could take a minute and wish our friend and mentor, Athena Haus, and her K9 partners Gypsy and Joey safe travels, they are redeploying to North Carolina with a small, hand-selected team of rockstar dogs and handlers from around the country to right a wrong and hopefully bring answers to a family who was scammed by an as***le during the worst disaster of their lives.
If you haven't been following, or are unaware, a family lost a member during Helene, and she has not been recovered. I know this has happened to many families during this horrible storm, but I am referring to one family specifically. During their desperate search for their loved one, an individual named Nick Lacaria took advantage of these people and represented himself as an effective and legitimate cadaver handler with a dog that could help locate her missing remains. During his online campaign, (this is not the only family he's scammed), Lacaria received ridiculous amounts of money from self-solicited donations, payments by desperate families trying everything to find their missing loved ones, and people who just wanted to help in any way they could, as well as an exorbitant amount of free gear and equipment. In case anyone doesn't know, a legitimate cadaver team will NEVER solicit payment from ANYONE in need. They are a completely volunteer based service that does NOT accept payment for services rendered.
This scammer has been publicly discredited by experts in the field, as well as the victim's family, and yet he continues to double down that his dog is legitimate, and that they "found" this woman's remains. He has not returned money taken, equipment donated, and hasn't even taken down his public social media posts, bragging about his own and his dog's skills, their "finds," and "contributions" to the Helene recovery efforts, and all the things this dog has allegedly done in it's exceptionally questionable career.
In addition to this being morally abhorrent, most likely illegal, and incredibly disgusting, I am now personally pi**ed off because my friends are having to go back down to this disaster after safely returning once, because their own incredible character and moral compasses will not allow them to stand by while this as***le continues to victimize these people. So they are taking time off work, saying goodbye to their families again, and going back to clean up this mess and do the right thing so that hopefully the family can get the answers they deserve. They are knowingly putting themselves back into the danger zone, asking their dogs to play a game where the reward for a well done job is a toy, and the penalty for a mistake could be death, and they are not complaining, delaying their response, or making excuses not to go.
These are active and retired first responders with a great compassion for their communities, and are no stranger to having incredibly difficult discussions about the realities of death with grieving and devastated family members. I hope that they are successful in their horrible hunt, and the family can get the peace they have deserved from the beginning. And I hope all of these incredible humans and their dogs have a safe deployment and dreamless sleep afterwards.
I have included links to this dick's social media pages, his GoFundMe, which is infuriatingly currently still active, as well as some screenshots from the family. I have also included a link to the North Carolina Trooper's Association K9 Search and Recovery group. Their handlers have been hitting it hard from day one, and are some of the hand selected teams to go back into this mess to do the right thing. Show them some love.
https://www.facebook.com/nctak9
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1GGvPXHTK7/
https://www.gofundme.com/f/aid-for-k9-and-homestead-during-deployment?fbclid=IwY2xjawHCgVVleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHZaBZFRRcPJr-0TnR-wz7Ase9m7R3ZkcB_LJPix6it1XZv3VClKykRuzXA_aem_TklsnUSM9dYm3Ys5RbU-JA
