A lifetime of caring: Sherry Knight awarded Person of the Year
Sherry Knight at the 2022 Best of the Best awards ceremony
Mark Marietta/for the Observer-Reporter
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
While she enjoyed her art teaching career, Sherry Knight’s legacy is Pet Search, an all-volunteer, no-kill animal rescue started in 1987 with her husband, Kent Knight. Here, Knight and adoptable Penny pose for a photo outside Pet Search headquarters in Washington, Pa.
Adoptable Penny surprises foster mom Sherry Knight with a slobbery kiss on a recent afternoon at the Pet Search headquarters along Jessop Avenue. Knight founded the all-volunteer, no-kill animal rescue 37 years ago, and her grandparents’ home serves as the nonprofit’s HQ.
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Top right: Sherry Knight, founder and director of Pet Search and the 2022 Person of the Year, doesn’t do it for the glory. “It’s not for the recognition. It’s not for the pat on the back. We do this because we have this passion,” said Knight, who launched the animal rescue with her husband Kent Knight 37 years ago. “We were rescuing and building our core of volunteers and our reputation while working full-time jobs. People always say, how’d you do it? And it’s like, I don’t know anymore how I did it. It’s a passion that we have.” Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Sherry Knight makes a speech after being announced as the winner of the Person of the Year award at the 2022 Best of the Best gala
Holly Tonini/for the Observer-Repoter
Top left: More than 60% of the animals rescued through Pet Search were saved from within the tri-state area, including Southwestern Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. But Sherry Knight, pictured here with Dempsey, the first St. Thomas rescue, and her husband Kent spread the love to their home away from home, and have partnered with the Humane Society of St. Thomas for more than two decades. Courtesy of Sherry Knight
Top left: More than 60% of the animals rescued through Pet Search were saved from within the tri-state area, including Southwestern Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. But Sherry Knight, pictured here with Dempsey, the first St. Thomas rescue, and her husband Kent spread the love to their home away from home, and have partnered with the Humane Society of St. Thomas for more than two decades. Courtesy of Sherry Knight
On a vacation to St. Thomas with her husband Kent, Sherry Knight, who has never lived far from the Canton Township home in which she grew up, expanded her Washington, Pa.-based animal rescue nonprofit’s reach to the island, where Pet Search has partnered with the Humane Society of St. Thomas for more than two decades. Courtesy of Sherry Knight
Sherry Knight is a caretaker.
Born and raised in Canton Township, Knight, a talented artist, was eager to begin a glamorous life in New York City, where she looked forward to starting her career in advertising. But when her mother passed just two weeks before college graduation, Knight, who earned a bachelor’s in art and art education from Carlow University, canceled her Big Apple plans.
“My dad just, he was lost. So it was like, I’m staying home to take care of my dad,” said Knight, adding she had no job prospects in the area. “So, I’ve got this education degree. I started shipping out all kinds of resumes … and I got hired at Trinity. At the age of 21, I started my teaching career.”
Knight spent nearly 40 years working full-time as an art teacher at Trinity High School, where she retired from her position as head of the art department in 2017. While instructing the next generation of Picassos and Georgia O’Keeffes, Knight and her husband Kent, who also worked full time, spent mornings, evenings and weekends building one of the most reputable animal rescues in Southwestern Pennsylvania. For her work as founder and director of Pet Search, she was voted Observer-Reporter’s Best of the Best Person of the Year 2022.
“This award was just totally,” she pauses, “I was not expecting that. I just was not expecting that,” said Knight, relaxing at the dog treat-covered kitchen table inside Pet Search headquarters along Jessop Avenue. “I was surprised, very surprised, when I received notification from the Observer-Reporter that I was nominated. Then I found out I was one of the three finalists. It’s a great honor to be recognized.”
Saving animals comes naturally to Knight, who unintentionally founded Pet Search with her husband (the pair celebrated 47 years of wedded bliss in January) in 1987 after three years of volunteering with the Washington County Humane Society.
“My mother was the neighborhood rescue person,” Knight smiled. “If somebody found an injured bird, if somebody found a bunny, if there was a kitten in the neighborhood, they brought it to my mother. My mother would nurse them, help find homes for them.”
Sherry Knight carries on that legacy of sheltering, feeding and finding loving homes for unwanted or homeless domestic animals in the tri-state area.
Since the no-kill, all-volunteer organization began as People for Animal Welfare 37 years ago, the nonprofit has saved more than 10,000 animals, including pygmy goats, potbelly pigs and reptiles, and placed the majority of those animals with adoring parents in fur-ever homes. Those animals that aren’t adopted are kept by their foster parents or Knight (she’s got 11 foster dogs at her house, she laughed) until they either find a home or pass away, contentedly, of old age.
But, though some dogs and cats remain with Knight or other volunteers, most find their purr-fect human match.
“The majority of our pets don’t return to us. We’re very transparent when we do adoptions. We want people to know the good, the bad and the ugly. We want to make sure that that person understands that this particular dog has these issues. We know that some aren’t always going to be the most adoptable,” said Knight.
“Every single animal that I have fostered and every single family that has adopted from me has taken a piece of me. We are a village. We are connected in some way. I treasure that every single day.”
In 1997, Knight expanded her village to the island of St. Thomas, where she and Kent were vacationing. Within a decade of annual vacations to paradise, the Knights had, together with the island vet, launched a spay/neuter program and partnered with the Humane Society of St. Thomas to fly adoptable dogs and cats to the states through the society’s Pets with Wings program.
“We would fly down, and of course, we would escort (animals) back, and then other people flying down, they could escort back. That became the connection with Rhea Vasconcellos (PWW program manager and acting shelter manager).”
When Hurricanes Irma and Maria hit in 2017, Pet Search and the Humane Society of St. Thomas had been working closely for years and together were able to rescue animals living in the humane society and surrounding island’s humane societies.
“There were 274 animals, dogs, cats, puppies and kittens” that were flown to a Virginia Beach horse farm and, from there, adopted into permanent homes, Knight said.
Through connections with St. Thomas, Pet Search now partners with Caribbean Canine Connection in Nassau, Bahamas, and Ruff Start Rescue in St. Croix.
“People always say, well, what about the animals here in our area?” Knight said. “More than 60% of our animals are coming from what we call our backyard, which is Western Pennsylvania, which is the Ohio Valley, Wheeling area, West Virginia. We have taken dogs that need help in Florida, in Kentucky, but that’s not our focus. There are lots of other rescues that are constantly bringing dogs up from Kentucky and Tennessee. Our focus is pretty much Western Pennsylvania and, like I said, the tri-state area. And then, of course, our sister shelter in St. Thomas. When we can help out other animals, you know, we certainly do.”
Folks have good-heartedly suggested Pet Search build a kennel to help even more animals, but Knight, who still considers her nonprofit a “small rescue,” believes the foster-to-forever model is best.
“We like to call ourselves matchmakers,” she said. “We’re matching up the right home for each and every individual pet. You’re not going to get to know that personality and temperament if it’s living a kennel, if it’s living in a dog run, if it’s living in a building. That’s why we’ve chosen for 37 years to continue doing foster-based rescue.”
Though she’d love to spend the next 37 years and beyond leading the animal rescue mission in Southwestern Pennsylvania, Knight admits that, at 68, she isn’t as spry as she once was.
“We were 31 when we started this. I know that I can’t continue this forever. I don’t feel that old. Sometimes it just takes me a little bit longer to do things,” she laughed. “But we have a great, very strong core of volunteers that believe in what we believe in.”
Knight will forever believe in Pet Search. It is her life’s passion, though lately, she’s enjoyed returning to her roots, making photographs, painting and drawing. When she isn’t saving animals or creating, Knight loves spending time with her husband Kent, hiking in St. Thomas and reading – Stephen King, Ann Rice and historical fiction are her go-to’s.
But every conversation winds naturally back to Pet Search. It’s her work with the animal rescue that will be Knight’s legacy.
“When we started … we never anticipated the growth that we would have,” Knight said. “We never anticipated the support that we would have. We just considered ourselves more of a little outreach where we could help people. And it just grew and grew and grew. And it’s been great. It’s been a great ride.”
For more information on Pet Search, visit petsearchpa.org.