Animal Lover Leaves Legacy to Local Rescuers

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Paddy and Don Greaves and one of their rescue pets.
Paddy and Don Greaves and one of their rescue pets.

Laguna’s abandoned pets and stranded pinnipeds are better off today because of a $720,000 donation from the estate of Enid Patricia Greaves, a 49-year Laguna Beach resident who died last year.

Known to her friends as “Paddy,” Greaves herself benefitted from the kindness of others, with the assistance of caring Top of the World neighbors enabling her to live out her 91 years in the comfort of her own home.

Earlier, Greaves and her husband Don, who predeceased her, decided to donate all of their estate to animals, said Steve Bunting, a neighbor she entrusted to administer what would amount to a $1.4 million estate. Their only son predeceased Greaves, and she is survived by a sister who lives in England.

Half of the estate, which came from the proceeds from the sale of Greaves’ home, would go to the Best Friends Animal Society in Utah, which the couple had visited twice on vacation, and the rest would go to local animals, said Bunting, a retired Newport Beach Fire Department battalion chief. Laguna Beach Animal Shelter and the Pacific Marine Mammal Center were each allotted one quarter of Greaves’ estate, leaving them about $360,000 each.

“We are so very grateful to receive her donation and will be honoring her in the future by placing a photograph in the lobby of the Animal Shelter,” said police Captain Jason Kravetz.

The City Council formally accepted the estate’s donation last week. It will be used for maintenance of animal facilities, animal care and outreach, says a staff report.

All of the neighbors looked out for Greaves, said Bunting, which allowed her to remain in her home until she was admitted to a hospital for pneumonia a year ago. Les Miklosy and his mother Anneliese watched television with her. The neighbor across the street put out her trash. Bunting helped out with some logistics. When Greaves wanted to get her estate in order, he took her to an attorney his parents had consulted. Once there, she surprised him by asking him on the spot to serve as her trustee. Greaves remained healthy, drove her own car and maintained her own affairs right up until her death, Bunting said.

The couple’s love for animals led them to adopt a Boston terrier, Bobby, from the Laguna Beach Animal Shelter. Bunting noticed Bobby age over the years until a day when he saw Greaves walking a decidedly healthier looking dog. The seeming miraculous age-reversal turned out to be a new dog. Bobby One had met his maker. When another Boston terrier serendipitously turned up at the shelter, manager Nancy Goodwin contacted Greaves, who happily took in Bobby Two.

Even as Greaves will be remembered for her generosity to the animals, she had her share of adventures before coming to Laguna Beach.

During the London blitz of World War II, Greaves worked in the British war office by day and as a rooftop airplane spotter and junior firefighter by night, according to the obituary compiled by Miklosy. She married Donald Greaves of the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1942 and they moved to Canada in 1945. They headed for the warmer climes of Orange County, arriving in Garden Grove in 1948 and ending up in Laguna Beach in 1965, where they became one of the very first residents of Top of the World.

Greaves, who studied English and fine arts at college, began painting in oils and water colors in Laguna, often depicting the places she’d seen during her extensive travels. She also taught watercolor painting at Saddleback College.

Through it all, Greaves and her husband Don were animal lovers who “were eager to give refuge to anything that walked, flew or crawled into their yard,” said Miklosy.

Before their shelter rescues, Don rescued their earlier dog, Rags, himself when he was a pipe fitter. In retrieving what he thought was a rag from a freshly dug pipe trench, he found the “rag” was actually a dirty puppy, who soon joined the family.

Don also climbed an olive tree once to retrieve Zambizi, the Miklosy’s Amazon parrot who had escaped their house. When he got close enough, the wayward bird chomped down on his thumb and Don said, “I got him.” Greaves herself put out seed for the doves, finches and sparrows in her yard, and she is “survived by Heckle and Jeckel, a pair of western crows that greeted her most mornings from their lemon tree perch in her back yard,” said Miklosy, who noted that the pair, when not dumpster diving downtown, occasionally still visit his back yard.

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