Wings of Rescue: Ric Browde on His High-Altitude Approach to Saving At-Risk Shelter Animals
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Ric Browde is the CEO of Wings of Rescue, the aviation-based nonprofit that moves at-risk shelter pets out of overcrowded or disaster-stricken regions and into communities where they have a real chance at adoption. A former record producer turned animal advocate, Browde brings a fast-moving, logistics-driven approach to rescue work, guided by a simple operational philosophy: never fly an empty plane. If an aircraft is heading in, it carries veterinary or humanitarian supplies; if it’s heading out, it carries pets whose lives depend on that lift.
LA Times Studios Pets spoke with Browde about the origins of Wings of Rescue, the hope and urgency that drive his team’s work, and why accessible spay/neuter remains central to building a more humane future for pets and the people who care for them.
This interview below has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Describe a little about your background and how that long and winding road eventually led to rescuing pets by plane.
I was involved in rock and roll since I was 18. I ended up producing around 42 albums and was fortunate enough to have a few hits. In 2005, I woke up one day in Beverly Hills, and my wife and I realized we’d never done anything to make the world better. We decided to get into dog rescue.
We started volunteering at the city shelters in the valley, East Valley and South Valley, then I moved to Baldwin Park. At the time, Baldwin Park was killing a hundred dogs every day. It was a blood bath. I brought in the things I’d used in rock and roll—the lessons I’d learned. We brought in photographers who shot for Vogue. We were the first shelter to use Facebook, the first to use YouTube. We created a networking list. Every week we photographed about a hundred dogs and some cats. Baldwin Park’s adoption rate soared. We had something like a 98% live release rate off that list.
How did that lead you to Wings of Rescue?
In 2014, the guy who founded Wings of Rescue showed up and told me he had the opportunity to send 105 dogs to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, but he needed $7,000 to do it. He was going to use eight small planes. I put the request up on Baldwin Park’s Facebook page and we raised the money in 15 minutes.
He was impressed and asked me to keep helping. I stayed involved. He eventually checked out in 2016 and formally left in 2017. I assumed the presidency, and at the time Wings of Rescue was almost entirely a West Coast operation—flying from Los Angeles or Livermore to the Pacific Northwest.
At the same time, I was getting calls whenever there was a disaster. We responded to flooding in Louisiana. And then in 2017, when hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria hit, everything exploded. Suddenly we had landed in all 50 states. We’re now at 18 countries, mainly in the Caribbean, plus Mexico and Canada. When I started, we were around 10,000 animals flown. Now we’re at about 84,000 and will probably hit 85,000 in the next two weeks.
We also deliver humanitarian aid—around 915,000 pounds of humanitarian and veterinary aid to disaster victims so far.
You also launched Operation Pit Stop. What prompted that?
During the pandemic, we went two years without anesthesia drugs, so spay/neuter just wasn’t being done. That created a huge population explosion—set us back about 20 years.
At the same time, corporate groups bought up thousands of veterinary clinics and raised prices. Spay/neuter went from about $125 to over $700 nationwide and more than $900 in Los Angeles. People can’t afford it.
So we started Operation Pit Stop to provide free spay/neuter for low-income families. The transfer of animals is essential to the animals we’re saving, but that doesn’t solve the problem. That’s a band-aid. The real fix comes through spay/neuter. That’s why we’ve partnered with Paws for Life in Los Angeles, Riverside County, and San Diego Humane to fund surgeries.
For readers who don’t understand the scale of what you do, how does the operation actually work?
To me, it’s like touring in rock and roll. We match shelters that need to move animals with shelters that have empty kennel space. Our mission is to fly large-scale transports of at-risk shelter pets from disaster areas and overcrowded shelters to shelters where there’s empty kennel space, and where no local animals are displaced.
Tomorrow we have a flight from Riverside to Seattle Humane. Last week we flew two planes out of Los Angeles—one with 109 pets going to Chicago, New York, and Maine, and another with 119 going to Seattle. We do around 110 to 120 flights a year, depending on disasters. Right now we’re responding to the hurricane in Jamaica.
What is the flight experience like for the pets?
Takeoff is a little pandemonium. Once we hit 10,000 feet, they all fall asleep. We cruise between 25,000 and 28,000 feet. When we come down, around 3,000 feet, it’s like being on a plane full of three-year-olds asking, “Are we there yet?” They get excited. But honestly, pets have far better manners than rock musicians.
What does a flight cost?
The Riverside-to-Seattle flight is about $17,000. The Florida flight tomorrow is around $26,000. Last week’s multi-stop flight cost $48,000. The C-130 we used for Maui was about $400,000—we had over 700 pets on that flight.
We rely on donors. Our Facebook page has almost 600,000 active followers. Our budget is about $3–4 million a year, and we only have three employees.
Rescue work can be heavy. How do you stay positive?
I feel good after every flight. I think I have the best job in the world because I’m actually making the world better. The dread is knowing you didn’t save everybody. But then you see the pets we’ve flown and the photos from families whose lives were enriched. That keeps you going.
When you’re in a shelter picking who gets on the lifeboat and who goes down with the Titanic, that’s awful. But every time we bring aid into a disaster zone or send a pet to safety, you’re reminded that we all have the capacity to make the world better if we just do it.
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