Author: Courteney Stuart

In 2019, Albemarle County rolled out restrictions on homestays, limiting which properties are eligible to be listed on sites like Airbnb. Home child care centers also merit their own county code section. Now, the owner of a dog who disappeared after being left with an Albemarle-based pet-sitter says the county should regulate in-home animal care services offered through sites like Rover.com and Wag.com.  

“I think that there definitely has to be some kind of accountability for any animal care inside of a residential home,” says Michael Juers, whose 2-year-old Chihuahua, Rosie, vanished last April after he and his wife dropped their two dogs off with Adrienne Skaggs on Fray’s Mill Road. 

The current county code has stringent requirements for commercial pet-boarding operations: Animals must be kept in a sound-proofed building, for instance, and dogs must be contained in outdoor areas by an external solid fence with a minimum height of six feet. All animals must be indoors between 10pm and 6am.

Those conditions were apparently not met at the Fray’s Mill Road property, where Juers dropped his dogs off as he and his wife prepared to move from Charlottesville to Florida. After Rosie disappeared, the Juers soon learned they weren’t the only ones to suffer such devastation after trusting Skaggs with the care of their animals. 

Multiple other dog owners reported similar experiences with Skaggs, including one whose dog reportedly escaped within an hour of arrival at Skaggs’ home and was promptly hit and killed by a car.

Another dog was also hit by a car after escaping Skaggs’ property, but survived. 

“Our number-one goal is really just to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else,” said that dog’s owner, Ben Combs, in a February C-VILLE article. 

Albemarle County Supervisor Ann Mallek says supervisors haven’t discussed restricting pet-sitting services, but she expressed an interest in exploring the possibility.

“I’ve asked staff to provide me with more information,” Mallek says.

A county resident who lives near Skaggs says Albemarle County Animal Control has been aware of issues with Skaggs’ pet-sitting operation since long before the Juers or others dropped their dogs off.

“We’ve been sounding the alarm for years,” says the resident, who requested anonymity due to fear of retribution from Skaggs.

The resident provided a document listing complaints called in about Skaggs since 2020. Among the incidents listed are multiple occasions of dogs running loose, loud barking, dogs behaving aggressively, and the sounds of semi-automatic gunfire coming from the property. The resident says both animal control and Skaggs’ landlord have been repeatedly notified of the issues.

Through a county spokesperson, Albemarle County Animal Control declined comment, citing an ongoing investigation. Online court records show Skaggs has been found guilty of misdemeanors relating to the care of dogs since January 1: two counts of running at large and inadequate animal care. In addition, Juers has filed a civil claim against Skaggs that is still pending.

According to Albemarle County property records, the property Skaggs is renting at 2641 Fray’s Mill Rd. is owned and managed by Veliky Commercial Properties. An online sample lease available through the Veliky Rentals requires tenants to “conduct themselves in a manner that will not disturb his neighbors peaceful enjoyment of the premises” and “not to use the property for any purposes other than residential.”

There was no response to an email sent to Veliky requesting comment on the complaints, and a woman who answered C-VILLE’s follow-up call declined comment.

“We aren’t going to entertain that,” she said.

Skaggs did not respond to an online message requesting comment, and a woman answering a previous call to a number listed for her online claimed it was the wrong number.

Juers says he hopes the pain and loss he and others have experienced will prompt a change in the county code.

“Inspections even, just like the county health inspector would,” he says. “Maybe they’re allowed two citations and then have to be shut down.” 

Last spring, Michael Juers and his wife Pamela dropped their two Chihuahuas off at the home of Adrienne Skaggs, a Ruckersville resident who’d listed her Sweet Dogs Grooming dog-sitting service on Rover.com. The Juers were traveling from the Charlottesville area to Florida ahead of a permanent move there, and hoped the dogs would have their own mini-vacation while the couple house-hunted. 

The day after leaving 2-year-old Rosie and 12-year-old Chico in Skaggs’ care, the Juers’ long-anticipated trip turned into a nightmare that began with a text from Skaggs. 

“She said, ‘Rosie got away, but she’s okay,’” says Michael Juers. “It was very vague.”

Ten months later, despite ongoing searches, there is still no sign of Rosie. When the Juers picked up Chico, he required veterinary care for a serious puncture wound. The Juers have since learned they’re not the only dog owners to suffer such anguish after leaving their pets in Skaggs’ care.

Ben Combs and Laura Brown also discovered Skaggs’ ad for dog-sitting on Rover.com and had used her once before without incident. They left their 11-year-old Chihuahua, Olive, at Skaggs’ Fray’s Mill Road home again in January when they traveled to Mexico. This time, they had to cut their trip short by a day when Skaggs texted to let them know that Olive had disappeared.

“It just really took us by surprise because she doesn’t run away or escape if we’re walking somewhere in the woods with her,” says Combs.

While Combs and Brown tried to change their flight and get home, family members in the Charlottesville area immediately mounted a massive search effort for Olive. Still in Mexico, Combs says he started calling businesses near Skaggs’ home and got some disturbing information.

“One of them was a farm and a woman picked up,” Combs says. “I told her what was going on and she was like, ‘I’m really sorry to say this, but this is the third call I’ve gotten about this from that facility.’”

Indeed, Skaggs is known to Albemarle County Animal Control. According to online court records, in January she was found guilty of inadequate animal care and allowing a dog to run at large, both misdemeanors that carry $250 fines. The Juers have sued her over the loss of Rosie, and that case is still pending. 

Albemarle County Police Public Information Officer Bridgette Butynski declined to comment on an active case.

After Googling Skaggs’ name and posting about Olive on the NextDoor app, Combs and Brown discovered the Juers and at least four others who were still searching for—or mourning the death of—dogs they’d left with Skaggs.

Combs and Brown consider themselves lucky. Olive was found after being hit by a car, but she survived. Karen Calvino’s 13-year-old Yorkshire terrier, Toby, was reportedly hit and killed by a car after he disappeared from Skaggs’ property the day before Thanksgiving.

Calvino and her husband had flown into Charlottesville from Florida to visit her daughter and grandchildren. Hoping to cut down on the holiday chaos, Calvino decided to board Toby with Skaggs for the three-day visit. Skaggs met Calvino at the airport and picked Toby up with his bed, food, and medicine. A few hours later, Calvino looked at her phone and saw a text from Skaggs. 

“Toby got away,” it read.

Calvino says Skaggs assured her she was out looking for him. Calvino’s kids posted about Toby on social media. The next morning, Calvino went to Skaggs’ house to make sure Toby wasn’t hiding behind furniture. She says Skaggs initially resisted letting her come in, and when she relented, Calvino was confronted with what she describes as a “horrific” scene: The room was filthy and dark, there was one couch with no cushions, and she counted an estimated 15 large barking dogs in stacked cages.

“My heart sunk,” says Calvino, who began shouting Toby’s name, to no avail.

“When I left, I almost started crying,” Calvino says. “I’m like, ‘How could I ever have done this to Toby?’”

Calvino says she printed fliers and posted online. After 12 days, Calvino says a man admitted to hitting and killing Toby with his car around 5pm on the day Skaggs picked him up. Calvino says the man claimed he threw Toby’s body into the trash but kept his harness.

Skaggs did not return online messages sent through Facebook and Bark.com, where her services are still listed. A woman who answered a phone number listed for her online claimed it was a wrong number and hung up after this reporter identified herself.

Both Rover.com and Wags.com have removed Skaggs from their platforms and cite a requirement for criminal background checks as one of their safety features, in addition to featuring previous client reviews.

“Prior to booking a service, we highly encourage pet parents to meet with multiple sitters in-person to discuss their specific care instructions, ask any questions they may have, and evaluate the sitter’s home environment to ensure it meets their expectations,” reads a statement from Rover in response to a C-VILLE query. 

The Juers, Combs, and Brown admit that while they found Skaggs through Rover, she offered them a lower rate to pay her directly, and they both agreed to do so. They also say subsequent examination of the rural property revealed alarming details including an electrified fence with gaps large enough for a small dog to slip through.

The Juers, Combs, Brown, and Calvino say they want their heartbreak to end Skaggs’ ability to take in animals. They also want to serve as a warning to others to scrutinize the credentials of the people who care for their pets.

“Our number one goal is really just to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else,” says Combs. “I think if we are successful in that, then we’ll feel vindicated.” 

Courteney Stuart is the host of “Charlottesville Right Now” on WINA. You can hear an interview with Michael Juers at wina.com.

On a sunny afternoon in July, hundreds of people looked on as a 737 touched down at the Spokane International airport. Sitting in a shuttle bus on the tarmac, surrounded by family and friends, Linda Chauvin watched the scene unfold with a mix of grief and exhilaration.

“The excitement was actually so palpable. We see this beautiful big bird come down and land, and then they open that cargo door and there was the honor guard, and then that coffin there,” she recalls with a sob. “I mean, he was finally home after 78 years.”

For Chauvin, who lives in Fry’s Spring, that moment on the tarmac was the culmination of decades of work and a lifetime of wondering what really happened to her father, Eugene Shauvin, a WWII pilot who’d been missing in action since his plane was shot down over Belgium on September 17, 1944. (The Chauvin family name was originally spelled with a C. Gene Shauvin said he wanted to legally change it to Chauvin when he got back from the war, and Linda honored that wish when she changed the spelling of her last name in 1971). This month, Chauvin returned to the site of the crash and to a memorial to the missing in the Netherlands, where she affixed a stone rosette next to her father’s name. The symbol shows that Gene Shauvin has been found, thanks in large part to his daughter’s stubborn streak. It’s a trait she likely inherited from him.

Over 20 years, Chauvin took multiple trips to the farm in Retie, Belgium, where her father’s plane had crashed. She pushed for the U.S. military to conduct several archaeological digs at the site, and finally on March 3 of this year, she received a call from Fort Knox that DNA testing had confirmed the human remains unearthed at the site last year were her father’s.

“I let out a scream. I burst into tears,” says Chauvin.

Chauvin has hazy memories of her father, whom she last saw when she was a toddler in the early 1940s growing up in Washington state. She recalls attending a movie with him and losing her shoe during the show. “I remember when he would hold me while wearing his uniform. Everything was uncomfortable against my body,” she says. 

Family members described Gene Shauvin as determined, athletic, and always seeking ways to improve himself. 

“Everybody, including my mother, said he had a very quick temper, but that he was also always quick to apologize,” Chauvin says. “And he was good-natured and witty as well.” 

One of nine children, Shauvin and five of his brothers served their country during WWII. Gene enlisted in the National Guard at 18 in 1936, and married Linda’s mother in 1940. Linda was born the following year, and in 1943, a year before his death, he enlisted in the Army Air Borne division. He deployed for Europe and never came home. Linda Chauvin says her childhood after his death was plagued by longing. 

“There was always this hollow feeling. And I think I just always felt like I didn’t belong to anybody,” Chauvin says. In high school, she read everything she could about the war. “When I would find out somebody had known him, I would question them, give them the third-degree.”

It wasn’t until the arrival of the internet in the 1990s that she began her search for her father in earnest. She started by posting a request for information about his mission on a WWII message board.

“I got all these hits from people that I later realized were all serious researchers and historians, and one of them was a man in Ohio,” she says. “He wrote back, ‘I think I may be able to help you.’” 

That man told her about Pathfinders, the pilots who flew ahead of Allied airborne invasions marking the way for planes carrying paratroopers that followed. Shauvin had been the pilot of one of six planes flying ahead of a massive airborne mission, Operation Market-Garden, which aimed to create an Allied route into Germany. The man suggested she get in touch with Charles Faith, another airborne soldier who’d been aboard her father’s plane when it crashed.

“When I called him and I said, ‘I’m the daughter of your pilot in Operation Market-Garden.’ Oh, my God. He let out a cry,” she said. “Gene was a wonderful pilot and a wonderful man,” he told her.

On a subsequent trip to Texas, Faith described her father’s final moments as the plane flew toward Eindhoven in Holland. “It was picked off by anti-aircraft artillery that were located near Retie, Belgium,” she says. 

“Smoke was billowing out from the cockpit and the jump light was on,” Faith told her. As jump master, Faith was the first out.  In all, six of the men aboard were able to jump; the remaining nine perished. On the ground, Faith evaded capture and was sheltered from the Nazis by a Belgian family.

“All of his life he wondered about me because he knew Gene had a wife and daughter. And he welcomed me as if I was his own daughter,” Chauvin says. 

When Chauvin met Faith, he had already been back to the Belgian town where the crash had occurred. Faith had located other people who knew more, including a relative of another paratrooper who’d died aboard the plane and a Dutch woman whose father had painstakingly documented WWII crash sites across Europe.  

“She is the one who went over to Belgium and found the crash site. She was like a bloodhound. She inherited all of her father’s records,” Chauvin says.

In 2000, Chauvin, a Pathfinder historian, and the family who live at the crash site began working as a team to establish a Pathfinders memorial at the site. After securing support from the local government, that memorial became a reality in 2001. The descendants of the family at the crash site hosted Chauvin, Faith, and other relatives of men on the plane for the dedication of the Pathfinder memorial marking the spot Gene Shauvin and eight other U.S. soldiers lost their lives.

Chauvin, accompanied by her mother, two of her surviving uncles, cousins, and her new Belgian friends went to the site for the dedication and stood in the field where the plane went down. 

“Everybody started yelling at me … pointing up to a tree,” she recalls. “There was this big, light-colored bird sitting there watching.” As she moved around, she says, the bird kept watching her. The field had been plowed many times, and the owner of the property assured her no remnants of the plane would be found. But as darkness fell and the group walked across the field, the owner tripped on something. A big piece of steel. Part of the plane.

“To me, that bird embodies the souls of those people who died on that plane and that they wanted to be found,” she says. 

Chauvin began pushing for an excavation of the site, and a team from the Army’s Central I.D. Lab in Hawaii, now part of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency first sent a team in 2002. In 2003, Chauvin participated in an archaeological dig of the site.

“It was a big honor to be able to do that,” she says. “But all of a sudden, the colonel in charge, the archaeologist, just said, ‘Okay, we’re done.’”

Chauvin says that team never excavated two temporary graves where the crew and paratroopers’ remains had been buried after the crash. Eight of the fallen men’s remains had been identified and repatriated but not Shauvin’s. At a 2015 event in Norfolk for families of MIA soldiers, Chauvin presented her investigative files and made another request for an excavation of the grave sites.

The case was reopened, and Chauvin says it would be years and multiple frustrating setbacks before any more action was taken. Finally, in spring of 2021, the excavation happened. After overcoming pandemic-related travel restrictions with the help of Belgian citizens and diplomats, Chauvin moved into an RV next to the crash site.

A team of 24 people worked for 70 days. “They got there in April, and you can’t believe what all they did,” she says.

After the digging was complete, Chauvin returned to the excavation site with the Belgian family and received another sign. 

“This big white bird flew down out of nowhere, and it flew over that rectangle that had been a big excavation unit. It flew about 18 inches off the ground, back and forth, like in a grid. … It was like it was healing that area. And then it flew off. We were dumbfounded.”

Six months later, Chauvin got the news she’d been waiting her whole life to hear: She’d found her father.

After Gene Shauvin’s remains were repatriated in July, Chauvin held the long-delayed funeral in his hometown of Spokane. Well over 100 people attended, many of them military members there to honor one of their own, missing for 78 years. A C-47 flew overhead, and TV cameras captured the moments before 2nd Lt. Eugene Shauvin was finally laid to rest in an American cemetery alongside members of his family.

“It was really something to see,” says Chauvin.

Now 81, Chauvin says the search for her father gave her the answers she’d long sought—and a lot more.

“I have new friends and much, much closer relationships with cousins,” she says. Her search for her father also led her to romance with a Belgian historian whose expertise in WWII history brought him to Retie during her visits.

“He’s been here to Charlottesville twice. And then I met him in Dallas in June, and we flew out to Seattle. He’s met all my family. We’ve been to Spokane, and he just fell in love with it out there,” she says. 

Her mother died last fall at age 99, months before the positive identification of her spouse was made, but Chauvin had shared that remains had been found. And Chauvin says she’s comforted by the idea that her father is now truly at peace.

“Several people have said to me, ‘Linda, he would be so proud of you,’” she says. “I bet he is.”