FRESNO — The lion died of cancer and the female hippo gave in to old age. The gorilla's living quarters were no longer up to snuff and he had to be shipped off, just like the polar bear.
Hard times have hit Fresno's Chaffee Zoo, once considered among the finest mid-sized municipal zoos in the country.
Raising money from wealthy farmers and developers isn't easy here. Organizations such as United Way say the San Joaquin Valley, beyond a handful of patrons, has never developed a culture of giving.
That's where little Angel Arellano comes in.
On Thanksgiving Day, the 9-year-old girl with a weak spot for animals -- she cares for an iguana and seven stray cats -- was sitting in the kitchen listening to three generations of elders bemoan the zoo's decline.
She grabbed her aunt's stationery, the one bordered in animals, and scrawled a letter to the Fresno Bee that has changed the way this community sees its frayed treasure.
"My name is Angel and I am 9. I heard that the Chaffee Zoo is having money problems. I am very worried for the animals. I think if everybody in Fresno gave $1 to the Chaffee Zoo it would help a lot. Here's my dollar," she wrote.
Jim Boren, the Bee's editorial page editor, had tried many times to awaken the city to the needs of the zoo on the poor south side.
His editorials couldn't keep Fresno from defeating a tenth-of-a-cent sales tax hike last March that would have raised millions of dollars for new exhibits and overdue capital projects.
Boren decided to publish Angel's letter -- in her own crooked handwriting -- next to an editorial headlined "Zoo's Guardian Angel."
Below a picture of the gap-toothed, smiling fourth-grader, the Bee invited readers to follow her example by donating to the "Dollars From Angels" fund.
The response was immediate. More than $37,000 -- in dollar bills and $1,000 checks -- have landed in the zoo's mailbox in the last month.
These days, it's hard to find Angel without a knot of reporters and cameras in tow.
"Do you know what it means to be a celebrity?" a reporter asks.
"It means I'm famous," Angel shoots back.
Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and the superintendent of county schools have commended her "compassion and spirit."
The Roosevelt High School football team held a carwash to raise funds. Sunnyside High School, which draws its students mostly from poorer neighborhoods, managed to hand over $1,000 to the zoo's curator. Other school districts are planning their own drives after the holidays.
