Written by Kimberly Henry Staff Writer for UNSUGARCOATED Media

June 23, 2021

“I always say I rescue animals, but honestly they rescue me.”

Photo provided by Lindsey Brooks

Driving down Little Tujunga Canyon Road in Los Angeles, the last thing I would expect to find is the largest chimpanzee sanctuary in the Western United States. But for 43 years, that’s exactly what the Wildlife Waystation offered visitors. Now, with the facility closing its doors, the fate of those chimpanzees is uncertain, with the state attempting to relocate and split up the colony. But if Lindsey Brooks has anything to say about it, the family of chimps will stay together in their home of over three decades.

Typing Brooks’ name into a search engine will pull up a wide range of results— “instapreneur,” inventor and the mind behind some of the highest selling “As Seen on TV” including the ShamWow. Yes, that ShamWow. Given her impressive resume in business, it might surprise you to find “animal rights advocate” on that list as well, but Brooks has devoted years to animal rescue.

“If I didn’t have [animals] I probably wouldn’t be here,” Brooks said.

Before Brooks dropped out of high school and made her first million at 19, she struggled with a difficult home life. “When I was a kid, my parents fought a lot,” she admitted. During one particularly bad fight, a kind neighbor offered Brooks a temporary escape to their farm. Brooks jumped at the opportunity, and that’s where she met Wire, a mustang the farmer had rescued. “We just fell in love. … I think he healed me,” Brooks remembered.

Wire set Brooks on a years-long journey into animal rescue that led her to the chimps at the struggling Wildlife Waystation.

“I never thought I’d be a chimp mom,” Brooks admitted, chuckling. When Brooks learned about the Wildlife Waystation, she knew it had been mismanaged for years. She knew that California Department Fish and Wildlife had seized the sanctuary from its elderly owner. She knew that the chimps housed there came from diverse backgrounds: some from biomedical labs, some from movie studios, a couple even belonging to the late Michael Jackson.

But it’s what Brooks didn’t know about the chimps that sparked her passion for their cause.

“These are more than just animals,” she insisted.

When Brooks and her husband first met the chimps, they did what most animal lovers do—they raised their voices a couple octaves, held out a treat and asked “Are you hungry? Huh?” What happened next changed Brooks’ view of chimps forever.

“He looked at us, and he stood up really tall, and he turned his head a little bit,” Brooks explains. “He looked at us like, ‘You jerks. You don’t even understand what’s going on here.’ And he walked away.”

Provided by Lindsey Brooks

In that moment, Brooks saw a higher level of understanding in the chimps, she saw their humanity. The more she learned about chimps, their ability to communicate and tell stories through sign language, their distinct cultures within colonies, the more she realized the importance of keeping the community together.

But to do that, Brooks has to get ahead of a relocation process already begun by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. After the Wildlife Waystation could no longer maintain standards of care for its animals, the CDFW took over and relocated as many animals as possible to various facilities equipped to care for them. Unfortunately, there are not many facilities capable of taking on 40 plus chimpanzees. Relocating the chimps would mean splitting up a community that had been together for over 25 years. A family, according to Brooks.

“It’s tantamount to you basically leaving your mom’s house this morning and saying, ‘I’m never seeing you again.’ It would kill her.”

Brooks knew she had to do everything in her power to keep the chimps together. That’s when she got involved in a plan to purchase the Wildlife Waystation and reboot it from the ground up into a facility capable of giving these chimps the life they deserve. Together.

But what can the product developer do to reconstruct a struggling animal sanctuary? Well, it turns out caring for a massive community of chimps is much easier when you have the resources, and this is where Brooks’ business background comes in.

With her expertise in branding and product development, Brooks plans to make the Wildlife Waystation a profitable, self-sustaining facility. As the deal to purchase the sanctuary goes through, Brooks is developing chimp branded products, designing a wildlife education campaign, and commodifying the chimps’ stories. But she won’t stop there.

Brooks sees the plight of the Wildlife Waystation chimps as just one branch of a larger problem with the abuse of nonhuman primates. At the same time she works to purchase the Waystation, Brooks and her husband are producing a documentary called “Are You Human?” that will shed light on the mistreatment of nonhuman primates in biomedical testing facilities. To Brooks, animal advocacy is about more than just protecting animals, but preserving our humanity.

“I would love … people to see what I see in our human animal family… these souls. If they could just see that they’re precious and that maybe they need to take a second look. When I’m able to get others to witness and admit that these chimps…these beautiful smart insightful beings who deserve to live out the rest of their lives in peace and safety… that they’re more than animals, beyond a test subject, beyond a throwaway, beyond someone else’s problem― then I’ve succeeded.”

Provided by Lindsey Brooks

Brooks is not alone in her efforts and has a team that is made up of individuals from Sectre Holdings, LLC and SPARTN who have been working diligently behind the scenes for nearly a year to develop a relief plan for the chimps. Sectre Holdings, LLC is a Los Angeles based start-up with strong interests in philanthropic efforts and impact-investing through its humanitarian organization, Sectre Outreach. SPARTNis the Small Primate Animal Rescue of Tennessee (@themonkeyhope on Instagram), a newly formed sanctuary member of the Wildlife Waystation Animal Sanctuary Network who just recently rescued its first three monkeys from black market sales. 

Together, Sectre Holdings and SPARTN are made up of an internal network of partnerships with highly successful companies/individuals with robust track records in various market/industry spaces and capacities over the past 20 years including animal rescue/rehabilitation, government contract procurement, finance/banking, and social media/influencer marketing and sales to name a few. Together, the team brings vast resources and strategic industry alliances that are ready to be utilized to successfully develop and execute the re-starting and growth/expansion plans for the remaining chimps at the Wildlife Waystation property.

For all Brooks’ passion, work and investment, the fate of the Wildlife Waystation is yet to be seen. Brooks doesn’t know what’s going to happen— all she has right now is her desire to preserve this family of chimps and a bid in to save their home. But Brooks will never stop advocating for these animals, these souls.

Watch a video about this issue here.