Author Brings Christmas Joy to Have a Heart Humane Society

Tehachapi• Fern Michaels, a New York Times Best-Selling author of womens' fiction and her daughter, Cynthia Kuczkir, donated a combined total of $30,000 to Have a Heart Humane Society in Tehachapi.

Michaels, a resident of Summerville, South Carolina, has been writing and selling books for 37 years. Most of those books have hit the New York Times Best-Sellers list. Her Polish grandmother told her that when God is good to you, you have to give back. Michaels set up The Fern Michaels® Foundation and grants four-year scholarships to needy, deserving students. She also opened pre-school and day care centers with affordable rates for single moms who are have a hard time making ends meet. She is also well known for her love of animals. Not only has she rescued many a mistreated or abandoned animal, but she has outfitted numberous canine officers with bullet proof vests.

Michaels has ties to Tehachapi through Have a Heart Humane Society's founder and president, Chelley Kitzmiller. "We became friends at a romance writers' conference in the 1980s and later, after I had published several books, we wrote an anthology together titled Heartbreak Ranch, set in the Caliente/Walker Basin area." Lisa Kimball's TV interview of the authors' collaboration on the book won her an Emmy.

Just as the book was coming out, Kitzmiller got word of an animal abuse case in Walker Basin: 50-60 Arabian horses had been neglected and were starving to death. Some had already died when Animal Control reached them. Fern, Chelley and the two other authors in the anthology, Jill Landis and Dorsey Adams, donated money to save the horses who were taken to the Lerdo Prison to be cared for by the inmates.

"Fern and I are old friends," says Kitzmiller. "We share a love for animals. For us, the abuse of those horses put a pall on the release of our book. We felt we had to do something to help – in the name of Heartbreak Ranch."

Have a Heart's email newsletter announcing its October 2014 fundraiser, an auction through Ebay Giving Works, was sent to more than 1500 subscribers and personal friends in September. Auction proceeds were to provide more mobile spay/neuter clinics in Tehachapi. Have a Heart began doing the clinics with Kern County Animal Control/Services in January of 2013, beginning with low-income Tehachapi residents and then to all Tehachapi residents. To date, the organization has hosted nine spay/neuter clinics, all funded by grants and private donations, not by Kern County Animal Services or tax-payer money. People signed up and paid a small co-pay of $15 to $25 pet pet. Both cats and dogs were spayed or neutered, microchipped, given a pain shot and a Rabies vaccination.

"I could not have been more surprised when a check for $10,000 arrived in the mail," says Kitzmiller. "With Fern's donation, we were over our $10,000 fundraising goal before the auction had begun."

The first low cost mobile spay/neuter clinic using Michaels' first donation was held November 8, 2014 and 39 cats and dogs were served. The second clinic, with 44 pets scheduled, on that same donation will be held Saturday, December 6, 2014 at West Park Activity Center, 410 W. "D" Street in Tehachapi. Additional clinics are scheduled for March, April and May 2015. So far these clinics are for Tehachapi residents only, but it is the hope of Have a Heart that they can eventually branch out into Mojave, California City, Boron and Rosamond.

"Another surprise arrived on Giving Tuesday with a Christmas card," says Kitzmiller. "One check from Fern and one from her daughter, Cynthia, both in the amount of $10,000. It was the most beautiful Christmas present I have ever received," says Kitzmiller. "With this money Tehachapi will be well on its way to becoming Kern County's first NO-KILL community."

Note: If you would like to contact Fern Michaels you may call her at (843) 832-4367 but due to hearing difficulty you might want to email her at [email protected] instead. Her website is: http://fermichales.com