Robert Shapiro on a Life of Rescuing Reptiles

Robert is the founder and leader of Stray Pride Animal Rescue, a grassroots civic project whose mission is to rescue and provide good homes for “misunderstood and unwanted” animals. Especially reptiles. He’s been doing this for a long time and he and his fellow workers (all volunteers) are very good at it! At our Civic Life office in New York City, we talk about how he got involved in this work, rescuing baby turtles from dumpsters, his philosophy, his method -- and how he got the money to start the initiative by creating T-shirts for causes he believes in (“The truly educated never graduate”). He’s a native New Yorker, a Queens kid. He’s a ranked handball player. He does profoundly creative things for profoundly decent reasons -- one needn’t talk about civics all the time to do civics -- and it was a great pleasure to talk with him.