Above, how Jennifer found her former Lakemill unit earlier this week, and her cats including Kitty Baby, Mohawk, Sweet Girl and Booger.
Ten cats a former resident at the Lakemill Lodge was taking care of have finally been reported rescued, after she says they remained trapped inside Room 403, from the date of the forced evacuation in late October due to safety hazards inside, until earlier this week.
“It looked like a tornado slash hurricane just went through,” she said of the apartment at 200 Mill Street, which had also been left unlocked for a while, after she was finally able to regain access.
Jennifer had been living at the Lakemill Lodge, paying $200 a week, since December, when on October 30th she heard from a friend via Facebook there was a heavy police presence outside, with chaos and people on the streets with their belongings.
“We didn’t get any kind of notice,” she said. She was told to grab stuff for just a few days.
“I wasn’t even given an option,” she says of taking the cats she was taking care of, including kittens just born, and two she had rescued, including one from a ceiling of the Lakemill.
“On the 30th when they came, the police were downstairs, I literally told the officers, ‘what are we doing with all the animals?’ And they didn’t say anything.”
She asked a Lakemill manager called Chuck to check in on her cats, their litter box and to give them food.
After going to another motel and getting her $100 deposit back from Lakemill, Jennifer went to live with a recently widowed dad in a place near Renown Hospital to help take care of his infant son.
She wasn’t allowed back into her previous unit until this past week.
In previous reporting Our Town Reno was told all animals from inside the Lakemill had been accounted for and taken out, which Jennifer disputes.
“It would have been better with Animal Services. I don’t know how many times they were checked on,” she told Our Town Reno this week, sending along the photos.
She said she previously called Animal Services and the Nevada Humane Society but that no one helped her with her cats.
The cats are now split between her and a friend who volunteers at the Nevada Humane Society.
“This is very concerning if this is true,” Shyanne School the director of Washoe County Regional Animal Service wrote to Our Town Reno. “As far as my team was concerned, we were advised by Rob Rice from Reno Code Enforcement as well as Junior Brar, property owner, as well as Chuck, property manager, that there were not any animals left behind. The date of that phone conversation is in my email below, on November 6. My team was not allowed to enter the rooms due to the exposure risk, nor would this be something that we would do without a specific plan and adequate staffing and PPE (personal protective equipment) to do so. To my knowledge, we have not received any additional calls to respond to the Lakemill Lodge for animals, but I will double check our call history. “
The Lakemill Lodge’s business license has been suspended, with new requirements to reopen including having 24-hour security and new perimeter fencing.
Some former tenants have taken up legal action against Lakemill ownership, and Jennifer is considering doing so as well.
She had previously moved from the fifth floor to the fourth floor of the Lakemill in September and at that time had put some of her paperwork, clothes and shoes in a storage section near the laundry room of the Lakemill. Those belongings, she says, are now all gone.
“It’s been a life experience, but holy cow. It’s not an experience I want to go through again,” Jennifer says of her recent few weeks.
Our Town Reno reporting, November 2024