This former Phoenix police officer now dedicates her services to helping animals in need

During her childhood in Michigan, Tracey Miiller found herself glued to the television watching iconic police shows, such as "CHiPs" and "Cagney & Lacey" and yearning to experience warmer weather.

Introduced to her passion for criminal justice through the police and crime dramas of the 1970s and 1980s, Miiller’s dedication to the pursuit of justice grew as she pursued a degree in criminal justice at Ferris State University. She graduated in 1993.

After college, in the pursuit of warmer weather, Miiller traveled southwest about 2,000 miles to attend the Phoenix Police Department’s police academy that same year, where she would spend 21 years climbing the ranks before retiring as a lieutenant in 2014.

“She’s got a vibrant personality that is kind of infectious,” said Wayne Dillon, a lieutenant with the Phoenix Police Department who worked with Miiller. “But on the flip side of that, she will tell you if something you’re doing is bothering her and she’s very open and honest and concise.”

After retiring, Miiller took four years off, but she quickly found herself searching for her second calling. She didn’t want to “be out in the field” or “carry a gun again,” but Miiller still wanted to put her law enforcement skills to use. During her job search, she came across a manager position at the Arizona Humane Society.

It’s been more than five years since she joined the Humane Society, which has led her to many leadership positions. As the director of field operations, Miiller heads several different teams; the animal cruelty investigators, emergency animal medical technicians and the emergency response team.

Following the disastrous wildfire in Maui this summer, Miiller led a team to aid animals in need.

Lifelong animal lover

As a lifelong animal lover, Miiller, 52, was intrigued by the position and applied because she had “always been around animals,” she said.

Growing up, Miiller’s family home had animals of all kinds, ranging from chickens to guinea pigs to rabbits to multiple fish tanks to ducks. And cats and dogs.

Her love for animals shined after she was hired by the Humane Society as a manager in 2018. After she provided her first medical exam on a dog, who had been brought in by EMTs after being hit by a car, she adopted him, said Ruthie Jesus, the Humane Society’s field operations manager and Miiller’s deskmate.

“She really has a big heart,” Jesus said. “He’s so protective of her, like mama’s his person.”

That dog’s name is Henry, a three-legged Dutch Shepherd mix. She also adopted Mr. Nanook, a German Shepherd-Malamute-Husky mix, from the Humane Society after he was adopted and returned four times.

“He’s my big wolf-dog,” Miller said. “I fell in love with this kid immediately when he was here because he’s so stinking adorable and the fourth time he was returned, I was like, ‘I can’t take it anymore, I’m taking him home.'”

Completing Miiller’s animal family is an eight-year-old Sulcata tortoise named Rosie, who also was adopted by Miiller from the Humane Society. “I’ve always said I wanted a dinosaur as a pet,” Miiller said.

Miiller worked under Debbie McKnight, the former vice president of field and animal welfare for the Humane Society, for four years. "Even though she was reporting to me, I will say that I learned a lot from her," McKnight said. "She is really an incredible leader."

The emergency response team provides medical aid, essential food and water resources and oftentimes creates a temporary animal shelter for the affected pets in the disaster area.

The team is commonly dispatched to Arizona’s wildfires. They take care and provide shelter to evacuated people and their animals, as well as providing shelter to animals whose owners have another place to go, but can’t bring their pet.

Their scope can extend out of Arizona: Most recently, Miiller and her team of four Humane Society staff members traveled almost 3,000 miles to Maui, Hawaii, after intense wildfires swept across the island.

“She is really loved by this team and she’s respected in our organization,” Jesus said. “She’s that leader that is very firm, has very high expectations, but is also very compassionate.”

Journey to aid Maui

On Aug. 8, a wildfire ignited on Maui, near the historic and tourist town of Lahaina, and would soon devastate the region. The fires destroyed multigenerational houses, essential businesses, community churches, beach resorts and much more, resulting in 97 confirmed deaths, as of Sept. 25, according to the New York Times.

Days after the wildfire started, Miiller was contacted by BISSELL Pet Foundation about sending out a team to the region to help provide aid and pet supplies and to rescue pets and animals who, along with their owners, had been displaced because of the fires on Maui.

Going to the wildfires: Arizona Humane Society sends emergency response team to Maui to help with pet rescues

“I’m so proud that I work for an organization that can sacrifice five key leaders for over a week that can do something like that,” Jesus said. “I’m so glad it was (Miiller) because I just can’t think of anybody better.”

Eight days after the fires started in Maui, Miiller and her team arrived at the island, partnering with the Maui Humane Society to provide aid.

The Humane Society team spread out to provide services; including providing aid to burned animals at veterinarian locations, bringing animals to shelters and taking a minivan full of donated pet supplies, such as pet food, into the community to hand out.

“We really did a ton of things in the community to assist them and provide them with free supplies that they couldn’t get anywhere else,” Miiller said.

In addition to helping household pets, the team also assisted ranchers in the area whose water supply had been contaminated with ash and smoke. Clean water and new food was provided to horses, cattle, sheep and pigs who had been cut off from their supply.

The last day the team was in Maui, they traveled into the burn zone to help a Federal Emergency Management Agency veterinarian who was trying to find cats still in the area. Using cat traps, the team was able to find several and bring them back to the Humane Society to receive medical treatment.

The experience of seeing Maui burned in this way was surreal for Miiller. She had traveled to the island four times previously for vacation, but she had never seen it like this.

“I can vividly see Lahaina in the back of my mind and when we went there for the first time and it had been completely destroyed because of the fire, it was very devastating,” Miiller said. “It felt like my memories had been erased from me from everything that I knew and that I enjoyed when I was there.”

The experience of working with the affected community was a deeply emotional one as individuals and families had their worlds torn apart.

“I could feel the grief from the community that had lost their home, had lost their businesses,”  Miiller said. “I’ve never received so many hugs in my entire life.”

Reach the reporter Morgan Fischer at morgan.fischer@gannett.com or on X, formally known as Twitter, @morgfisch.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Former Phoenix police officer Tracey Miiller now rescues animals