Humane Society Silicon Valley has a new name for its Animal Community Center in Milpitas and funding for its new mobile veterinary clinic.
The center was renamed in honor of Michelle Oates Detkin and Peter Detkin, whose $10 million multi-year investment will launch the Wellness Waggin’ to allow the Humane Society to provide low-cost and no-cost veterinary care to low-income residents. The mobile clinic is set to roll out in November, and the Humane Society plans to seek additional funding to keep the program on the road.
Next month will also mark the formal unveiling of the Peter Detkin and Michelle Oates Detkin Animal Community Center at a community event. In addition to their three children, the couple, who live in Los Altos Hills, have a dog and two cats they adopted from the Humane Society.
Michelle Oates Detkin said investing in the Wellness Waggin’ is “about pets and people—the human-animal bond—and about preserving relationships that sustain people, particularly now, with the future so uncertain for many.
“Equity demands of us as a community that families, regardless of income, are offered the opportunity to experience the value that having a pet in their home can bring,” the retired attorney said in a statement.
Her husband, a managing director at Sherpa Technology Group and a Humane Society board member, concurred.
“Bringing a pet into a home makes a family whole,” Peter Detkin said, adding that the Wellness Waggin’ will help “ensure that families or individuals with pets, regardless of economic means, can keep their pets healthy and receive the veterinary care they need.”
When asked about the Animal Community Center being named in for her and her husband, Michelle Oates Detkin said, “We accepted the honor of having our name on the building in the hopes it would inspire others to get involved.
“Our dream is that having a name on this building makes it a more personal, more accessible and more welcoming center for the community.”