Nearly two years after Tony La Russa dramatically ended his association with the Animal Rescue Foundation, the popular Walnut Creek nonprofit shelter he founded three decades earlier, he and his family have launched a new organization that they say shows their ongoing commitment to connecting pet lovers to stray and abandoned dogs and cats.
But even if La Russa, his wife Elaine and daughters Bianca and Devon split from ARF — which rebranded itself as Joybound People and Pets in 2024 — the Hall of Fame former Oakland A’s baseball manager is reviving a longtime ARF tradition to raise money: Hosting a star-studded, wintertime concert at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek.
The Champions to the Rescue benefit concert at 7 p.m. on Jan. 25 will officially introduce the Alamo-based family’s new nonprofit to the Bay Area community. Its celebrity musical performers include Counting Crows frontman Adam Duritz and actor Billy Bob Thornton. For baseball fans, the late Oakland A’s legend Rickey Henderson will receive a special tribute from a panel of fellow A’s Hall of Famers: Jose Canseco, Dennis Eckersley, Dave Stewart and La Russia himself.
The new nonprofit is called La Russa Rescue Champions and is dedicated to “companion animal welfare.” It’s being introduced a little over two years after La Russa, citing health reasons, retired from baseball after 60 years as a player, manager and front office executive. For 33 years, he was one of the game’s best managers with a career that included three World Series titles, six league championships and 13 division titles.
In an interview with this news organization, La Russa’s daughter, Bianca La Russa, said the new nonprofit’s name comes from the idea that “anyone can champion a cause.”
“There are obviously some champions of entertainment, sports and business, whatever,” Bianca La Russa said. “Anybody who’s helping rescue animals is a champion. And then, in turn, a lot of times, the animals themselves become champions for folks in need, such as veterans.”
As of now, Champions to the Rescue won’t offer direct services or have a brick-and-mortar-type facility, as the La Russas had with the Walnut Creek shelter, where Joybound now provides adoption, education and veterinary programs. Instead, it will focus on raising and distributing funds to existing animal rescue organizations in the Bay Area and nationally that “share our passion for rescue pets and the many benefits of pet guardianship,” Bianca La Russa said.
It also will launch a national website that will allow groups in different communities to essentially “crowdfund” by sharing their requests for specific kinds of help, such as financial donations, volunteers to foster rescue animals, a physical space to do their work or even entertainers to help them host gala fundraisers, like Saturday night’s event.
Regarding Bianca La Russa’s earlier comment about veterans, she said her father has personally, and through ARF’s former Pets and Vets program, supported programs that train rescue dogs to become service animals to veterans.
“You can’t do enough for veterans,” La Russa said in a statement in October, when he announced a partnership with a national nonprofit to provide pet rescue dogs to military personnel and their families. “Adopting a pet is life changing and improves a family’s well-being by providing comfort and alleviates stress and anxiety,” Tony La Russa said.
Bianca La Russa also addressed criticism about their time at ARF. Volunteers in the East Bay animal rescue community expressed concerns to this news organization that ARF had become a “boutique shelter” that raked in millions of dollars from the community, due to its La Russa affiliation. But Lisa Kirk with Fix Our Shelters and others said that ARF didn’t prioritize the critical work of supporting free- or low-cost spay and neuter programs. National and international humane societies say that spay-and-neuter programs address the root cause of animal suffering by helping to reduce dog and cat overpopulations in communities.
Supporting spay and neuter programs “has been a focus of ours for a very long time,” Bianca La Russa said. She also lamented that many “pet guardians” would love to spay and neuter their dogs or cats but can’t afford even a low-cost procedure or face long waits at overburdened clinics.
The newly rebranded Joybound offers low-cost spay and neutering. La Russa said their family’s nonprofit “would definitely” find ways to support clinics or other programs to reduce pet overpopulation.
In their release, the La Russa family spoke about reactivating “confidence” in the community, an apparent acknowledgement of the controversy that erupted over their departure from ARF. They initially stepped down from ARF’s board of directors in 2021 and publicized concerns about ARF’s workplace culture under its executive leadership, but stayed on to support ARF’s mission.
Any lingering support the La Russas had for ARF ended in 2023, when they dissolved their partnership and La Russa removed his name from the organization and his collection of sports and music memorabilia from its headquarters. The La Russas claimed that ARF was no longer committed to nurturing “compassion and care for animals” and “mutual respect” among employees.
Two years later, it sounds like everyone involved in the breakup just wants to move on. Joybound has not yet responded to a request for comment about any changes to its mission but it reported being busy the past two weeks relocating dogs and cats from shelters in Los Angeles, to free up space to house pets displaced by the Los Angeles wildfires.
In a statement, the La Russa family said they want to continue their history of supporting a family nonprofit that nurtures “a culture of mutual respect, trust, and caring for the mission and each other.”
Bianca La Russa also said: “I think that we’re just really excited about focusing on the future and the new chapter.” While not commenting directly on the ARF breakup, she said: “I think there’s so much good and positive stuff that we have learned from decades of being in animal welfare and pet rescue that all of it has inspired and informed our path forward.”
Tickets for Champions to the Rescue at the Lesher Center for the Arts cost $75-$150; www.lesherartscenter.org.
Staff writer Jon Becker contributed to this report.