Former Grey’s Anatomy actress Katherine Heigl has donated $1 million in honor of her late brother Jason Heigl to help combat the growing pet population problem plaguing Los Angeles.
The new mom is behind a new initiative called the Compassion Revolution, which will help sponsor no-cost spay and neuter programs in the Los Angeles area.
The Jason Debus Heigl Foundation — named in memory of Katherine’s teen brother, who passed away in a car accident in 1986 — will work with The Cesar Millan’s Millan Foundation (spearheaded by TV’s “The Dog Whisperer”), the City and County of Los Angeles, and various other organizations on the project to get pets spayed and neutered in The Golden State. The foundation aims to stop the pet population crisis in the area with animal birth control initiatives, but also through its support of training and obedience programs, rescue organizations, “no kill shelters,” and pet adoption programs which help move homeless animals away from shelters which intend to put them down.
Over 50,000 of 80,000 shelter animals in Los Angeles County were euthanized last year, according to The Heigl Foundation.
Heigl, who herself has six dogs, three of them rescues, said that she and her mom, Nancy, felt hopeless and overwhelmed by the pet population crisis in Los Angeles and vowed to do something to help.
“I said to my mother, ‘I think it’s a really grace-filled way to honor him,” Heigl told Access Hollywood last week. “My mother began the foundation in his name as a way of creating a legacy for this child of hers that didn’t live long enough to do that himself and he also happened to be a real advocate for animals and children and the repressed so it works out beautifully.”
Katherine gifted the City of Los Angeles with the monetary donation on the 24th anniversary of her brother’s fatal crash.
“It’ll never change how this day feels to us come September 23 every year. It has a significance now, of beauty, a grace to it, that we are grateful for.”
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