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Speaker 1: This season, we're bringing you stories about people finding their
Speaker 1: professional stride by virtue of who they know, whether it's
Speaker 1: breathing new life into an age old profession, taking the
Speaker 1: reins in a family business, forging your own path with
Speaker 1: a new idea, or landing the perfect job doing something
Speaker 1: you'd never before even considered. The final episode of this
Speaker 1: season is about a man named Jim Lurita. His work
Speaker 1: as a veterinarian in the town of Hope, Maine has
Speaker 1: had a profound effect on a lot of people. He
Speaker 1: was always really good with animals. You know, we had
Speaker 1: dogs and cats and all of that, and he was
Speaker 1: probably the one who really got them the best. The
Speaker 1: story of Jim LaRita and the trajectory of his work
Speaker 1: is a pretty wild one, and a big part of
Speaker 1: that trajectory was his brother, Tom. So I'm Tom law Rita.
Speaker 1: I am Jim Loreta's elder brother. Tom is the CEO
Speaker 1: of New Leaf Symbiotics, which is a big plant microbio
Speaker 1: company in St. Louis, But in his early days he
Speaker 1: had a much different job. The Ladies and Gentlemen. Boys
Speaker 1: and Girls, Welcome World to Carson and Barns, the world's
Speaker 1: only five ring circus. Tom went to college for about
Speaker 1: two years before leaving in nineteen seventy seven to become
Speaker 1: a juggler and ring announcer at Carson and Barnes, the
Speaker 1: largest tinted circus in America. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Prima
Speaker 1: Ballerina of spangle Land. Ladies and gentlemen, the Amazing Captain
Speaker 1: Donald car Tom and Jim grew up in a rural
Speaker 1: part of the Adirondacks before moving to the closed off
Speaker 1: suburbs of Yorktown Heights in New York. But one summer
Speaker 1: a two bit circus came through town and captivated them.
Speaker 1: It was this big window into a world that they
Speaker 1: just hadn't known before. You know, there was always this
Speaker 1: image of running away and joining the circus, of course,
Speaker 1: that lots of people grew up with, and that is
Speaker 1: in fact what we ended up doing. Tom ran off
Speaker 1: to the circus first. Meanwhile, Jim was in college studying
Speaker 1: zoology when Tom called him and said that he could
Speaker 1: get him a job with animals and circus. And the
Speaker 1: job was shoveling elephant manure because so we had twenty
Speaker 1: six elephants that were traveling with the show. It's a
Speaker 1: lot of elephant manure. You have no idea how much
Speaker 1: the maneuver that is. Jim showed incredible talent for working
Speaker 1: with the elephants and eventually worked his way up to
Speaker 1: trainer for the second largest herd of elephants in the
Speaker 1: United States. We would have what was called the Long
Speaker 1: Mount so all twenty six elephants would come rumbling into
Speaker 1: the tent. It was a huge tent. The first elephant,
Speaker 1: who was the matriarch, would stop, and then one behind
Speaker 1: her would get on her haunches and put her to
Speaker 1: front feet on the back of the first one, and
Speaker 1: then the third, and the fourth, et cetera, all the
Speaker 1: way through. So you know, my script was now count them,
Speaker 1: and it was one to all the way to six.
Speaker 1: And I guarantee, and no one who saw that, you know,
Speaker 1: he is ever gonna forget that. Once he worked with elephants,
Speaker 1: he was stuck on that. He would you know, he
Speaker 1: loved elephants and that was that was always his dream.
Speaker 1: Jim later told Tom that when he left the circus,
Speaker 1: he made a promise to one of the elephants that
Speaker 1: one day he'd be back. They both left the circus.
Speaker 1: After a few years, Jim went out to do a
Speaker 1: ton of cool jobs. He worked on an Alaskan oil rig.
Speaker 1: He worked on Japanese fishing boats monitoring sustainable practices. He
Speaker 1: went to India to study elephants, and eventually he ended
Speaker 1: up in this little town in Maine called Hope, where
Speaker 1: he was going to open his own veterinarian office. People
Speaker 1: in the community there immediately loved Jim. Tom said he
Speaker 1: was always a guy that people wanted to be around,
Speaker 1: but he thinks that he's still kind of always preferred
Speaker 1: the company of animals. He would say, you know, people
Speaker 1: are mean, people are dishonest, and animals are are not.
Speaker 1: The animals are who they are. I remember being in
Speaker 1: his vet practice and there'd be some dog come in
Speaker 1: and it was growling and you can see this thing
Speaker 1: was going to bite, and I was like, whoa, I
Speaker 1: don't want to go near this animal. He would just
Speaker 1: walk up to it, you know, put his hand on it,
Speaker 1: and he had no fear, and the dog felt that
Speaker 1: and would immediately calm down. It was amazing, really, he says,
Speaker 1: if your dog was sick, you could call Jim at
Speaker 1: one am and he had right over and if you
Speaker 1: didn't have any money, he'd just say pay me when
Speaker 1: he can. That's just who he was. In fact, he was,
Speaker 1: you know, a terrible businessman in that sense, because he
Speaker 1: didn't he didn't really equate the fact that he was
Speaker 1: doing this thing that he loved with animals to the
Speaker 1: idea that he also was supposed to be making money
Speaker 1: and he could have been on Park Avenue in a
Speaker 1: vet practice, you know, making a gazillion dollars, but he
Speaker 1: really wanted to be in Maine. And he always had
Speaker 1: this dream of having elephants, so much so that this
Speaker 1: little picture of an elephant on the wall in his office,
Speaker 1: and he told everyone who came in one day, I'm
Speaker 1: going to take care of elephants here in Maine. Did
Speaker 1: you think he was crazy the first time he told you? Well,
Speaker 1: I thought it was unusual. This is Carrie Lurita, Jim's
Speaker 1: wife of twenty years. I mean, I just seemed but
Speaker 1: I'm so used to, you know, off the wall sort
Speaker 1: of wacky things from him, and he just came at
Speaker 1: life in a different way, and I believed it. Yes,
Speaker 1: I thought it was weird and crazy, but I didn't
Speaker 1: doubt it for a second. Carry first met Jim bringing
Speaker 1: her ex boyfriend's cat to the clinic. She and that
Speaker 1: guy eventually broke up, and after just two dates, him
Speaker 1: and Carrie moved in together, and it was instant and
Speaker 1: totally meant to be. He was magnetic, He had no
Speaker 1: um judgment of anyone. Ever. A couple of years after
Speaker 1: they met, they got married. They ended up having two boys,
Speaker 1: Henry and Lewis, And the whole time they were together,
Speaker 1: Carrie knew that the elephant thing was eventually going to happen,
Speaker 1: because that's just the kind of guy that he was.
Speaker 1: Exactly he said he was gonna do something, he did,
Speaker 1: and if he said he was gonna anything, anything that
Speaker 1: he said, he followed through on. And so I knew,
Speaker 1: I knew it would happen. In two thousand and eleven,
Speaker 1: it did. We're here in Hugo, Oklahoma to begin the
Speaker 1: process of moving these animals up to Maine. Uh Rosie
Speaker 1: and Opal are going to be coming to Maine this
Speaker 1: week to begin their new life. This is a clip
Speaker 1: of Jim. He started a YouTube channel with a bunch
Speaker 1: of videos documenting the elephants. This is one of the
Speaker 1: first when he and Tom established Hope el Fants in Maine,
Speaker 1: which was basically an old folks home and rehab center
Speaker 1: for retired circus elephants. Their first two elephants were Rosie
Speaker 1: and Opal, who were from the original herd that Tom
Speaker 1: and Jim worked within the circus years before. I think
Speaker 1: they're gonna be very comfortable. They're gonna have an hour
Speaker 1: and a half of physical therapy a day each. They
Speaker 1: are going to be exercised regularly. Their feet are going
Speaker 1: to be worked on every day. Rosie and Opal both
Speaker 1: had a lot of physical ailments. And we're about fourty
Speaker 1: years old when they came to Maine, which is pretty
Speaker 1: old for elephants. Rosie was very young when Jim first
Speaker 1: met her in the circus, and out of the twenty
Speaker 1: six elephants, Jim really bonded with her. She is the
Speaker 1: elephant that Jim promised he'd come back for all those
Speaker 1: years ago. Rosie was the first elephant that was a
Speaker 1: candidate for this, and she had a severe arthritis, so
Speaker 1: she had a real limb. And she was also an
Speaker 1: outcast in the herd because she was more interested in
Speaker 1: people and she was interested in the elephants, and the
Speaker 1: other elephants didn't like that. In fact, even when I
Speaker 1: had her, when she was young, when I was taller
Speaker 1: than her her, you couldn't walk her past certain elephants.
Speaker 1: He pushed her around and they would kick at her,
Speaker 1: and they would throw their trunks at her. And so
Speaker 1: we said, well that's not a good way to live um.
Speaker 1: And so we said, can we find a special friend
Speaker 1: for her, and we did find a special friend and
Speaker 1: her name is Opal, So she and Opal get along
Speaker 1: together very well. So Opal was someone who kind of
Speaker 1: got along with Rosie. So that's how the decision was
Speaker 1: made by Jim and the owners of the Elephants that
Speaker 1: they would come to Maine to go through this rehabilitation
Speaker 1: and become part of Hope Elephants. I felt an instant
Speaker 1: connection to Opel. I just remember the eye contact and
Speaker 1: it was crazy, unbelievable. Oh, she said, to give girl.
Speaker 1: This is from a video of Carrie holding Opal's trunk
Speaker 1: and walking with her on a sunny day. Good Jimmy
Speaker 1: would say she was, you know, she was mischievous, and
Speaker 1: he would say she has crazy eyes. It was a
Speaker 1: little bit of a wild card. But I like that
Speaker 1: about her. She was spicy, kind of like me, which
Speaker 1: is probably why we had that instant initial connection. And
Speaker 1: Rosie was was very sweet and kind of more docile.
Speaker 1: I just think of her swaying back and forth with
Speaker 1: her eyes sort of half closed, just just they're you know, comfortable,
Speaker 1: they're peaceful. And this one is from a clip of
Speaker 1: Jim spraying Rosy down with cold water. Where all your
Speaker 1: friends jealous Oh yeah. They didn't even know what to
Speaker 1: do with themselves when we brought them over. These are
Speaker 1: carrying Jim's two boys, Henry and Lewis. Yeah, and Lewis
Speaker 1: m Jim's youngest son, Um Henry Um the oldest. Both
Speaker 1: boys are in college, Henry studying zoology just like his dad.
Speaker 1: But you guys are like the elephant kids. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got some comments about the smell after goat shoveled
Speaker 1: down in the morning and aren't eating m classes. It
Speaker 1: wasn't like having just regular pets. Rosie and Opal became
Speaker 1: a huge part of the family's life and became a
Speaker 1: fixture in the community. Everyone says. They played a lot
Speaker 1: of tricks on each other and on the family, hiding
Speaker 1: hay from one another and using their trunks to steal
Speaker 1: treats from your back pocket when you weren't looking. They
Speaker 1: even figured out how to turn off the electric fences
Speaker 1: around the enclosure. They're like two mischievous old ladies. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what they were. Pretty much. Only thing missing
Speaker 1: was a handbag. We'll get back to the story in
Speaker 1: a second. First, a word from Express employment professionals. A
Speaker 1: strong work ethic. It takes pride in a job well done,
Speaker 1: sweats over the details. This is you. But to get
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Speaker 1: we can even complete your application with you over the phone,
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Speaker 1: the production floor to the front office. Express Nose Jobs,
Speaker 1: get to No Express, find your location at Express pros
Speaker 1: dot com or on the Express Jobs app. And now
Speaker 1: back to our story. Hope Elephants was completely open to
Speaker 1: the public and they'd have school groups and all sorts
Speaker 1: of people travel from everywhere to see Rosie and Opal
Speaker 1: and to Jim. It was a lot more than just
Speaker 1: a retirement home. The other purpose was education and so
Speaker 1: that people who came to Hope Elephants walked away thinking,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this is just so amazing and so cool,
Speaker 1: and these animals are so beautiful. And the idea was
Speaker 1: that people would be inspired in some form or in
Speaker 1: some way to care about elephants through seeing the interaction
Speaker 1: and trying to preserve elephants or at least bring awareness
Speaker 1: of the probable extinction of elephants. The elephant enclosure was
Speaker 1: literally in carrying Jim's backyard and taking care of them
Speaker 1: was a ton of work. Would you say your dad
Speaker 1: was kind of like a workaholic. Yeah, for sure, Like
Speaker 1: elephants just functioned with the sun. So seven days a week,
Speaker 1: just down down at desk, he was, you know, all in.
Speaker 1: I mean if they were if one of them was sick,
Speaker 1: he'd put a cot up in the barn and you know,
Speaker 1: spend the night there making sure that they were okay.
Speaker 1: Or people used to say, Jim, you need to take
Speaker 1: a break, you need to come in. You know, he
Speaker 1: was always in the barn and he didn't have to be.
Speaker 1: He he wanted to be. I mean, he loved, loved,
Speaker 1: loved being around them. Jim had a great rapport with them,
Speaker 1: great rapport. This is Cindy Preventure. I was the other
Speaker 1: elephant trainer. To keep elephants, you legally have to have
Speaker 1: a backup handler on call in case of emergency. She's
Speaker 1: retired now. She lives in New Hampshire, but she and
Speaker 1: her son Travis would go up and take care of
Speaker 1: the elephants with Jim. They became like family. So one
Speaker 1: night in September of two thousand fourteen, Cindy said that
Speaker 1: she gave Jim a call to give him crap because
Speaker 1: her son said that Jim had been working too hard.
Speaker 1: This was on a Monday night, you know, because he
Speaker 1: saw my number and he was like, hey girl, because
Speaker 1: that's what he all has said. Hey girl. You know
Speaker 1: one of the elephants had she had a bad belly,
Speaker 1: and he had been and he had been walking her
Speaker 1: a little bit and um over the weekend. And my
Speaker 1: son had mentioned, while, yeah, he's tired, you know, he
Speaker 1: hasn't gotten much sleep. And we had just had this
Speaker 1: conversation like weeks prior to you know, you're not alone
Speaker 1: in this, Like I can come up and help you know, um,
Speaker 1: so that you're not exhausted whatever. And so he's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know she's fine, she's better. Now I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: some sleep tonight because I'm like, I'm on my way,
Speaker 1: I'm going to grab a bag, and he's like, no, no,
Speaker 1: you know, we'll see you on Wednesday. And the very
Speaker 1: next morning, carry called me, Um, could you kind of
Speaker 1: bring me back to the day that Um? Okay, okay.
Speaker 1: So the racine was he would go out first first,
Speaker 1: first thing in the morning, unless he had slept there,
Speaker 1: and check the girls, give then their hay, give them
Speaker 1: their you know, just the usual morning routine. And we
Speaker 1: had a baby monitor left over from the kids that
Speaker 1: we had in the living room so that whenever he
Speaker 1: did come in, he would you know, listen for anything
Speaker 1: going on out there, any noises or any upset if
Speaker 1: you know, if they if he left them alone. And
Speaker 1: I heard him make a bizarre sound, you know, and
Speaker 1: then he said no Rosie, and I thought, well, that's weird.
Speaker 1: And I went out there and the doors locked, I
Speaker 1: couldn't find the keys, and by the time I got in,
Speaker 1: he was laying on the ground and both the girls
Speaker 1: were just you know, in the pen, and he was
Speaker 1: laying there. Jim his hip was shot and he knew
Speaker 1: he needed a new hip, and he was always putting
Speaker 1: it off. And Um, like the last person he ever
Speaker 1: took care of was himself. So what I think happened
Speaker 1: is probably he fell um and I think that Rosie
Speaker 1: tried to help him up, you know the way an
Speaker 1: elephant helps another elephant up as they used their foot
Speaker 1: to sort of you know, pick them up. And I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure she didn't try to hurt him, you know,
Speaker 1: she tried to help him, but in helping him crushed
Speaker 1: his crush. It was my freshman year and then I
Speaker 1: just popped blame back. You know. It was like a Tuesday, um,
Speaker 1: and I was like, you know, like woke up early
Speaker 1: for school and like, um, like heard some stuff going
Speaker 1: on through the monitor. You know. It was just like
Speaker 1: right in the right in the heat of it. It
Speaker 1: was kind of popped underwhere I felt really really protective
Speaker 1: of the boys and of I don't know, I just
Speaker 1: wanted to be in a bubble. I didn't want to
Speaker 1: I didn't want the real world to be out there waiting.
Speaker 1: I took a while for to get through that. I
Speaker 1: remember pulling out of my driveway and I remember pulling
Speaker 1: up to their house. This again as Cindy, the other
Speaker 1: elephant trainer. The two elephants were in the outside pasture
Speaker 1: when I got there, and you know, I just went out. Now,
Speaker 1: I didn't even call them or anything. I just kind
Speaker 1: of stood and they both came like walking up and
Speaker 1: like Rosie was like putting her trunk all over me
Speaker 1: and chirping and as if to say, like something's wrong,
Speaker 1: and they knew. I mean, it took a couple of
Speaker 1: days for me to even go out there, and then
Speaker 1: when I did, I didn't want to leave. It was
Speaker 1: really emotional in a good way. I mean, I missed them,
Speaker 1: and I could tell they missed me, but it was
Speaker 1: that much harder because I knew they were leaving so
Speaker 1: many so many emotions, you know, in all the shock,
Speaker 1: it was like what are we going to do these animals,
Speaker 1: and what's the right thing to do? And we quickly realized, okay,
Speaker 1: this is it. I mean, we can't go on with
Speaker 1: Hope elephants and um, they have to go back to Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: which was always the plan, by the way, and Jimmy
Speaker 1: had always said, if something happens to me, they need
Speaker 1: to go back to the herd, and so that's what
Speaker 1: we did. The rest of Rosie and Opal's original herd
Speaker 1: that Tom and Jim had worked with in their circus
Speaker 1: days had retired to a similar organization in Oklahoma called
Speaker 1: Endangered Arc. Within a few days, they sent up a
Speaker 1: truck and Rosie and Ople were on the road south. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was sad to see that go, but I don't
Speaker 1: think it would ever be the same if Jim wasn't there,
Speaker 1: because like Jim was, like he was a superstar. You know,
Speaker 1: people die all the time, but not many people touch
Speaker 1: as many other beings as as Jim did. The memorial
Speaker 1: for Jim was a massive event, and hope it was
Speaker 1: even televised. Oh that was wild. I mean, there must
Speaker 1: have been a thousand people there. I mean, it doesn't
Speaker 1: it seems like a fiction. His trajectory in his life.
Speaker 1: You know, he kind of just had this like magnetism,
Speaker 1: magnetism about him. You know, it attracted people and to
Speaker 1: help people together. And that's true both in the context
Speaker 1: of family and I think the community as well. Um,
Speaker 1: A lot of the decisions that I make and a
Speaker 1: lot of the things that are doing a lot of
Speaker 1: the way I approached the world is a product of
Speaker 1: how um he did all of those things. I mean,
Speaker 1: the true, true lesson was that he you know, he
Speaker 1: followed his dream. He had that dream since he was young,
Speaker 1: and he made it happen. Yes, it was horrible and
Speaker 1: devastating and just shattering, but he you know, he said
Speaker 1: he was going to do it. It was his dream,
Speaker 1: and he did it. I mean that that is worth everything,
Speaker 1: that above all, to have the boys know that, and
Speaker 1: to know that myself, m he was living his dream,
Speaker 1: which I don't think very many people can see that.
Speaker 1: Even with the hope elephants gone, Rosie and Opal's presence
Speaker 1: in the town is still felt there and is a
Speaker 1: big part of their story now, and Jim's work bringing
Speaker 1: attention to the conservation of elephants reverberates far outside of
Speaker 1: mains borders. Even National Geographic made a video remembered Jim
Speaker 1: and all that he did. In two thousand seventeen, Opal
Speaker 1: passed away at the age of forty eight. Rosie is
Speaker 1: still living outer years, happily amongst the herd that Jim
Speaker 1: first met her in. Jim LaRita was a veterinarian. That
Speaker 1: was his job, but his real work was providing a
Speaker 1: window into a world that people hadn't owned before. Something
Speaker 1: bigger than that. He took a crazy idea and made
Speaker 1: it into his legacy, a story that will be told
Speaker 1: by everyone who knew him for years and years to come.
Speaker 1: The biggest thing that I got from hearing jim story
Speaker 1: is I think it's important that instead of who we
Speaker 1: are being defined by what we do for a living,
Speaker 1: we really need to start thinking about what we do
Speaker 1: for a living being defined by who we are. That
Speaker 1: is how Jim Loreta lived his life. And you've got
Speaker 1: to wonder what would the world look like if we
Speaker 1: all pursued work like that. If you had to give
Speaker 1: a like a ringmaster exit to Jim, how what would
Speaker 1: you How would you do it? Probably something like Ladies
Speaker 1: and gentlemen, the man and the legend, Jim Loreta, He'll
Speaker 1: be back. There they go, those ponderous pack of darts. Rosie,
Speaker 1: Opal and Jim huge thanks to the LaRita family, to
Speaker 1: Cindy Preventure, Marty Lorita and Endangered arc. You can find
Speaker 1: pictures and videos of Jim, Rosie and Opal on our
Speaker 1: website Express pros dot com. Slash podcast for On the Job,
Speaker 1: I'm otus Gray. Thanks for listening to On the Job,
Speaker 1: brought to you by Express Employment Professionals. Find out more
Speaker 1: at Express Pros dot com. This season of On the
Speaker 1: Job is produced by Audiation and Red Seat Ventures. Our
Speaker 1: executive producer is Sandy Smallens. Our producer is Otis Gray.
Speaker 1: The show is mixed by Matt Noble at The Loft
Speaker 1: in Bronxville, New York. Find us on I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and Apple Podcasts. If you liked what you heard, please
Speaker 1: consider rating or reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen. We'll see you next time. For more
Speaker 1: inspiring stories about discovering your life's work, Audiation