80-Hour Workweeks Were Beastly, so She Took a New Stand as a Pet-Sitter

Three years ago, Susan T. Suchocki was on the success ladder, working as a manager with a nationwide restaurant chain. But she was working 80 hours a week.

“I knew I had to slow down,” Suchocki said. She felt that no matter how hard she worked, “I wouldn’t be considered for a higher position because I was a woman. Besides, I knew I wanted to get married some day and have children.”

So she quit and became a baby-sitter for pets, a role that had swirled around in her mind for 10 years. “I’ve always loved pets, and I was always very good with animals.”

Even though her pet-sitting business has blossomed, “there were times when I had to work as a waitress to help pay the bills. Isn’t that a joke?”

Now the 32-year-old Laguna Beach resident, who has a degree in biology and once did contraceptive and cancer research at the University of Texas, has a client list of 250 pet owners.

They pay her $10 a day to stop at their homes to feed, water, entertain, give love and attention, walk and talk to their pets, all in 45 minutes. For $15 she stops in twice a day.

And she even waters the plants and turns on the sprinklers.

Suchocki said she usually pet-sits 15 homes a day, sometimes more during summer vacation time.

“I am a professional pet-sitter who doesn’t just walk in the house, feed the pet and leave,” she said. “Pets are like children, and the owners want them to be comfortable and happy when they leave on vacation. There’s a lot of difference (between) hiring a kid down the street and hiring me.”

In fact, she has helped form the Pet Sitters Assn. of Southern California, which has a membership of 150. “Our aim is to professionalize our work and let people know we’re doing this as a living and not as a pastime or extra-money job.”

Besides cats and dogs, Suchocki also gets a lot of bird-sitting assignments. “That takes some special care because the talking birds are really smart,” she said, adding that if they don’t get the attention they think they deserve, “they tell me and won’t go back into the cage until they get it.”

For the most part, her life as a pet-sitter is a delight, but Suchocki remembers a couple of trained attack dogs she had to outwit to survive. “I ended up having to feed them by throwing some milk bones to them through a partially opened door,” she said.

Although pet owners usually interview Suchocki before hiring her, she said, “I have 70 clients I have never seen. They send me a key, leave me a note and a check.”

Life is happier since her 80-hour work days, said Suchocki, who has a dog, two cats and 20 canaries of her own. “I don’t think I’ll ever work 80 hours a week again, but if I do, it will be a pleasurable experience.”

A bunch of kids asked 6-foot-tall Al Nagy of San Juan Capistrano for his autograph following the pro exhibition basketball game last Sunday at UC Irvine’s Bren Center.

After all, he scored two points. And that’s terrific for a 43-year-old chief executive officer who was playing out his fantasy.

He and 10 other executives paid $2,500 each to play basketball with a bunch of pros including Byron Scott, Kurt Rambis and Mike Smreck of the Lakers. The game raised $50,000 for four charities from entry fees and corporate sponsors.

“I have a box score from a newspaper that shows I scored two points,” said Nagy, who heads Birtcher Financial Services in Laguna Niguel. “How many guys can say they played in a pro game and scored two points and can prove it with a press clipping?”

He added, “And now I’m getting interviewed . . . so I’ve lived out my fantasy completely.”

Acknowledgments--Five generations of family including Marion Tran, 89, of Anaheim, and descendants Mary L. Luker, 70, Carol L. Houck, 48, Cyndy Church, 28, and Ashley Church, 6 months, held an ancestral gathering at Buena Vista Convalescent Hospital in Anaheim where the matriarch, Tran, lives.