SITTING IN : What with pet care, crime and natural disasters, who can risk leaving the house these days? You can-with the help of professional sitters.

Nelson Ley, a 53-year-old La Canada Flintridge loan officer, was in agony. He had to go on a business trip but couldn’t find anybody who would look after his home and pets.

“I didn’t want to leave my house empty. Also, I have three miniature dachshunds with a strict routine. If they don’t get their cookies for breakfast and have dinner between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m., they go nuts,” Ley said. “None of my friends would take time off to watch the house and to care for the dogs.”

While worrying about canceling yet another trip, Ley remembered a flyer by Home Sitting Services, a South Pasadena house-sitting agency. “I called and they introduced me to Hazel, a sweet old lady. She stayed in the house while I was away, fed the dachshunds, watered the plants, picked up the newspaper and even had all my blankets washed when I got back,” Ley said. “Home Sitting Services took a load off my mind.”

Home Sitting Services is one of about a dozen businesses in the greater Los Angeles area that specialize in caring for homes while owners are away. Scattered from Calabasas to Redondo Beach to South Pasadena, they serve a diverse clientele ranging from vacationing families with stay-at-home pets to business travelers who want to keep burglars away from unoccupied condos. Depending on the homeowner’s needs, house sitters tend to such duties as taking in mail and newspapers, setting out garbage, looking after pets, watering houseplants and checking home security.

Although some house-sitting services are one-person operations, most operate as referral agencies with up to 40 home watchers, including senior citizens and professionals. Prices start at $8 for a half-hour visit and $25 for an overnight stay and go up to $50 for such additional services as taking phone messages or mowing the lawn. Live-in house-sitting runs about $40 for 24 hours.

Once considered a neighborly chore, house-sitting became a profession in the United States in the early 1970s. Importing the concept from Great Britain, retiree W. Alfred Sutherland expanded his favors for friends and family into a referral service for senior home sitters in Denver.

House-sitting came to the Los Angeles area about 10 years ago when Sutherland, the self-declared “Colonel Sanders of home-sitting,” started to sell distributorships nationwide. Soon, entrepreneurs from all walks of life adopted the idea and opened independent house-sitting businesses.

According to local house sitters, there has been a growing demand for professional sitters in the last five to six years. With crime figures soaring, most homeowners consider a lived-in look the best protection against break-ins.

Also, recent years’ earthquakes, fires and floods have made more and more people reluctant to leave their dwellings unoccupied. “Having a sitter at home while I’m away gives me 100% peace of mind,” Ley said. “I can enjoy a trip without worries about a leaky roof, some guy cleaning out the house or my dogs chewing up the couch.”

Before Ley called Home Sitting Services in 1989, he had renounced traveling. Bonnie, Benji and Twitty, his dachshunds, would not allow a change of routine, let alone being kenneled. Also Ley, who works for Great Western Bank, did not want to leave his home unoccupied.

These days, the native of Cuba hits the road five or six times a year--thanks to Hazel, the house sitter. “In a way, Hazel changed my life. I’ve become more independent and less worrisome,” said Ley, who leaves a blank check for the sitter to cover any household emergencies.

Although temporarily unoccupied homes are covered against property damage and burglary by the standard homeowners policy, insurance agencies often recommend the preventive measure of hiring a house sitter. “You just don’t want to come home after a weekend in Palm Springs and find your furniture floating about your flooded living room,” said Marvin Marlowe, an agent for Allstate Insurance in Santa Monica. “But that can happen if a pipe bursts and nobody checks on the house for a couple of days.”

According to Marlowe, appliances like dishwashers and washing machines are the main troublemakers in an empty house. “Appliances get old, are short-circuited and cause fires,” Marlowe said. “By having somebody stop by or even stay in the house while you are away, a little defect can be fixed before it develops into an emergency.”

The services make painstaking efforts to match the client with the appropriate home watcher. Most services visit the client’s home to list specific instructions, like pet care, plant care, switching off and on lights and checking the alarm system, before assigning a sitter. The service then selects the right licensed and bonded sitter for the tasks involved. Once a match is made, most homeowners hire the same sitter each time they leave town.

“House-sitting is so very, very personal. Both parties have to really like each other,” said Sharon Kelley, owner of Home Sitting Services, a referral service with about 35 retirees as sitters. To make sure that a particular home watcher is available, Kelley recommends calling early. “Our busiest times are the weeks after tax time until well into the summer and between Thanksgiving and the holiday season. Some people arrange for their home sitter months in advance,” said Kelley, who works out of her home and has been serving the San Gabriel Valley since 1986. She suggests calling at least two weeks before going on a trip regardless if hiring a house sitter for just a three-day weekend or a four-week vacation.

Kelley’s much-in-demand seniors, most in their late 60s or early 70s, specialize in live-in service starting at $30 a day plus a $7 to $10 food allowance. “Working with senior house sitters is very rewarding,” said Kelley, who is in her early 40s. “They have long proven themselves to be reliable and careful.”

Although some retirees sit homes to supplement their income, others enjoy the change of scenery and the chance to meet new people. For Alice Krause, a former beauty shop owner in her 70s, house-sitting opened the door to a new life. To be with relatives, Krause and her mother had moved to El Monte from Illinois in 1988. When her mother died two years later, Krause felt lost. “Suddenly I was alone and didn’t have anything to do anymore,” Krause said. Her sitter career started a few months later with a Home Sitting Services want ad in a seniors magazine.

These days, Krause spends up to three months a year under other people’s roofs, an average assignment lasting two weeks. Often, homeowners leave personal memos detailing Krause’s duties. One time, during a house-sitting stint in Pasadena, Krause pruned delicate plants. Another time, Krause house-trained Brigham, a 10-week-old puppy, while its owners went skiing. “When you house-sit, you do things you rarely do at home,” Krause said. “It’s never boring.”

Krause has proven time and again that she can handle situations that go beyond her assigned chores. While house sitting for Toni Martinez-Burgoyne during last winter’s rainstorms, Krause found water pouring onto an antique piano through a leaky window. “I got buckets out, pushed the piano aside and covered the hardwood floors with plastic,” Krause said. By the time Martinez-Burgoyne and her husband, Rod, got home to Pasadena, the piano was wiped dry and the living room taken care of. “I sing Alice’s praises all the time,” Martinez-Burgoyne said.

Martinez-Burgoyne, a 52-year-old vice president of First Interstate Bank, first hired a house sitter about five years ago. “I had had it with imposing upon my children,” she said. “They were starting to have their own lives and did not have the time to check the house. They would feed the dogs and water the plants but would forget to pick up the newspapers and to take the advertisements off the doorknob.”

A friend recommended a professional house sitter. “We found some house-sitting agencies in the Yellow Pages and went from there,” said Martinez-Burgoyne, a frequent traveler. “Hiring a sitter proved to be a worthwhile expense because it bought us peace of mind. Before, it was a toss-up whether the house was safe or not.”

According to Officer Lynn Letai of the Los Angeles Police Department’s crime prevention section, a good alarm system and a home’s lived-in look are the “two biggies” when it comes to warding off intruders. She recommends timed lighting, making sure that mail and newspapers are not collecting at the doorstep and to have somebody drive by the house on a regular basis. “Also, let your neighbors know that you are on vacation and tell them to call the police when they see somebody near the house who is not supposed to be there,” Letai said.

Tailoring house-sitting jobs to fastidious homeowners is a priority for Jamie Lafer. Her Santa Monica company, Life by Jamie, dispatches home watchers mainly to Century City, Malibu, Santa Monica and Beverly Hills but also helps out desperate homeowners in such places as Northridge and Toluca Lake. “Our niche in the house-sitting business are additional services. We not only watch the home but get things done around the house while the people are away,” said Lafer, who opened her Wilshire Boulevard office in 1992.

Besides typical house-sitting chores, Lafer and her crew of about 15 sitters take on almost every task--from supervising remodeling projects and assembling furniture to delivering drapes at the cleaners. “Many of our clients have a second home on the East Coast and go back and forth. They want to have these things done while they are not in California,” said Lafer, whose customers range from executives to celebrities.

Lafer recruits professionals in stable positions looking for some extra earnings as house sitters. “They have a full-time job and a sense of responsibility that comes with it,” said Lafer, who is in her 30s. For an overnight stay, Life by Jamie charges the homeowner at least $40, which is split equally between house sitter and referral agency.

When an assignment requires some extra care, Lafer steps in herself. Like the time in 1992, when a recently widowed client called for a house sitter who would clear out her late husband’s office while staying at the Brentwood home. “Her husband hadn’t filed a piece of paper in 30 years,” Lafer said. “I discovered $100,000 worth of uncashed checks in an old drawer. It was quite a surprise--for the homeowner and for me.”

A house-sitting assignment Lafer takes to heart is for actress Diane Lane. Lane, who appeared in such movies as “The Cotton Club” and more recently “Judge Dredd,” first hired Lafer about nine months ago. “I needed somebody to get some battles won in my absence,” said Lane, who spends several weeks each year away from her Century City condo on movie sets.

Besides routine house-sitting chores, Lane entrusts Lafer with such tasks as supervising handymen, refinishing hardwood floors and the decoration of the quarters for the nanny of her 2-year-old daughter, Eleanor. “She [Lafer] gets things done around the house that I can’t get done. It’s like having a sort of a clone,” Lane said.

Another face to house-sitting that has surfaced are precautions against natural disaster. When the Southland was plagued by a series of earthquakes, rainstorms and fires over the last couple of years, more and more homeowners started to worry about what such emergencies would do to their empty dwellings. “People used to call me to watch their pets. Now, they want somebody to check on the house, just in case,” said William McLean, owner of McLean House Sitting-Pet Sitting in Sherman Oaks. “People have become more sensitive, especially after the [1994 Northridge] earthquake.” Over the last year and a half, the one-man operation’s clientele has swollen to 140 repeat customers.

“In the beginning, people are a little anxious to really trust you with their personal belongings. But I have plenty of references they can check,” said McLean, 56, whose clients mostly live in the middle- to upper-middle-class neighborhoods of the San Fernando Valley. Like most professional house watchers, the former health care professional is bonded and insured.

McLean charges $8 for a half-hour drop-in visit, an overnight stay starts at $25 plus traveling expenses. “Business is good. I spend about 90 days and 90 nights each year in other people’s homes and make a few visits each day,” McLean said. “When the people come home from their trip and find their house in one piece and their animals happy, they breathe a sigh of relief. That’s an extra reward for me.”

Kessing is a Los Angeles free-lance writer.

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How to Prepare for a House Sitter

To make house-sitting a positive experience for you and the home watcher, house-sitting services offer this to-do list:

1--Make sure your neighbors know that a house sitter stays in your home while you are away. If possible, introduce the sitter to the neighbors.

2--Leave a list of emergency phone numbers (plumber, veterinarian, etc.).

3--Leave instructions on when to water plants, what and when to feed animals and when to switch on lights or close drapes.

4--Show the house sitter the locations of the alarm system, water heater and fuse box. Also, show him or her how to use them.

5--Leave detailed information on the operation of appliances.

6--Let the house sitter know how you want the phone answered and what to do with phone messages.

7--Store irreplaceable or fragile items in a safe place.

8--Leave a phone number where you can be reached in case of emergency. For problems or questions the house sitter may have, leave a nearby friend’s or relative’s phone number.

9--Make sure the house sitter is covered by your homeowner’s insurance.

10--Let the house sitter know if any household appliance, equipment or gear is off-limits and if he or she may bring guests.

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House-Sitting Services

Home Sitting Services

South Pasadena

(818) 441-3888

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Life by Jamie

Santa Monica

(310) 395-5182

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Home Sitting Services of Beverly Hills

West Los Angeles

(310) 826-6049

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Ace Housesitting Service

Sherman Oaks

(818) 894-5500

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Reliable Housesitting

Calabasas

(818) 224-4738

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McLean House Sitting-Pet Sitting

Sherman Oaks

(818) 386-1975

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The Professional’s Assistant

Redondo Beach

(310) 376-3772

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You Can Count On Me

Downey

(310) 869-7221

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While You’re Away

Newport Beach

(714) 567-4847

An additional source of professional home watchers is pet-sitting services that have branched out into house-sitting. Check the Yellow Pages under “Pet Sitter Services” or “Dog and Cat Sitting Services” for their addresses and phone numbers.