HOUSTON – “This is my family. I don’t have brothers and sisters. I don’t have my parents anymore. Lola and Joseph are my family. They are my kids,” Carlo Powe said.
For Powe, a former model and actress from Detroit now living in Houston, it has been a hellacious year.
First, she was evicted from her home, then she wound up in a hospital following a breakdown, and then after giving her two beloved pets, Lola, her service dog chihuahua, and Joseph, her black cat, to a neighbor to take care of temporarily, she wound up unable to get her pet family back.
“My heart breaks every day. Like, I’ve been scared, like, what if I don’t ever see them again?” Powe said.
Of course, we all love our pets, but for Powe, who suffers from PTSD, severe anxiety and depression, it’s even more tragic because Lola helps her deal with her emotional problems.
“Yeah, Lola, she’s like medicine. Like for my mental health. She’s a service dog,” Powe said.
The problem, Powe said, started after she got out of the hospital and wanted to get her animals back home.
Text messages were sent back and forth. Powe asked for her animals back but for months, she could not get her animals back from the neighbor, who agreed to take care of them.
That’s when she wrote the “Spencer Solves It” team for help.
Immediately, I went to work trying to find the woman who had been caring for Powe’s animals.
I found her and contacted her via phone and by text. Then I went to see her in person and try to negotiate an agreement.
After a long, emotional talk between me and the woman caring for Lola and Joseph, a woman (who we are not identifying but did a beautiful job caring for them, by the way) agreed to turn both animals over to me.
Now, after seven long months alone, depressed and shaken, Powe got her two babies back.
”Oh, oh my lovely, my lovely Lola, hi mommy, it’s me, ha, ha, ha,” Powe said, fighting back tears as she takes the two animals in her arms.
Now reunited after seven months apart, Powe, Lola and Joseph are all together again.
And how does she feel about that?
”I am thrilled it’s over. It’s over and I’m so, so, so, grateful. You call Bill Spencer if you’ve got a problem, it works,” Powe said, as the tears welled up in her eyes.