More Than A Job: The Story of Jim Laurita

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This season, we're bringing you stories about people finding their professional stride by virtue of who they know, whether it's breathing new life into an age old profession, taking the reins in a family business, forging your own path with a new idea, or landing the perfect job doing something you'd never before even considered. The final episode of this season is about a man named Jim Lurita. His work as a veterinarian in the town of Hope, Maine has had a profound effect on a lot of people. He

was always really good with animals. You know, we had dogs and cats and all of that, and he was probably the one who really got them the best. The story of Jim LaRita and the trajectory of his work is a pretty wild one, and a big part of that trajectory was his brother, Tom. So I'm Tom law Rita. I am Jim Loreta's elder brother. Tom is the CEO of New Leaf Symbiotics, which is a big plant microbio company in St. Louis, But in his early days he

had a much different job. The Ladies and Gentlemen. Boys and Girls, Welcome World to Carson and Barns, the world's only five ring circus. Tom went to college for about two years before leaving in nineteen seventy seven to become a juggler and ring announcer at Carson and Barnes, the largest tinted circus in America. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Prima

Ballerina of spangle Land. Ladies and gentlemen, the Amazing Captain Donald car Tom and Jim grew up in a rural part of the Adirondacks before moving to the closed off suburbs of Yorktown Heights in New York. But one summer a two bit circus came through town and captivated them. It was this big window into a world that they just hadn't known before. You know, there was always this image of running away and joining the circus, of course, that lots of people grew up with, and that is

in fact what we ended up doing. Tom ran off to the circus first. Meanwhile, Jim was in college studying zoology when Tom called him and said that he could get him a job with animals and circus. And the job was shoveling elephant manure because so we had twenty six elephants that were traveling with the show. It's a lot of elephant manure. You have no idea how much

the maneuver that is. Jim showed incredible talent for working with the elephants and eventually worked his way up to trainer for the second largest herd of elephants in the United States. We would have what was called the Long Mount so all twenty six elephants would come rumbling into

the tent. It was a huge tent. The first elephant, who was the matriarch, would stop, and then one behind her would get on her haunches and put her to front feet on the back of the first one, and then the third, and the fourth, et cetera, all the way through. So you know, my script was now count them, and it was one to all the way to six. And I guarantee, and no one who saw that, you know, he is ever gonna forget that. Once he worked with elephants,

he was stuck on that. He would you know, he loved elephants and that was that was always his dream. Jim later told Tom that when he left the circus, he made a promise to one of the elephants that one day he'd be back. They both left the circus. After a few years, Jim went out to do a ton of cool jobs. He worked on an Alaskan oil rig.

He worked on Japanese fishing boats monitoring sustainable practices. He went to India to study elephants, and eventually he ended up in this little town in Maine called Hope, where he was going to open his own veterinarian office. People in the community there immediately loved Jim. Tom said he was always a guy that people wanted to be around, but he thinks that he's still kind of always preferred

the company of animals. He would say, you know, people are mean, people are dishonest, and animals are are not. The animals are who they are. I remember being in his vet practice and there'd be some dog come in and it was growling and you can see this thing was going to bite, and I was like, whoa, I don't want to go near this animal. He would just walk up to it, you know, put his hand on it, and he had no fear, and the dog felt that

and would immediately calm down. It was amazing, really, he says, if your dog was sick, you could call Jim at one am and he had right over and if you didn't have any money, he'd just say pay me when

he can. That's just who he was. In fact, he was, you know, a terrible businessman in that sense, because he didn't he didn't really equate the fact that he was doing this thing that he loved with animals to the idea that he also was supposed to be making money and he could have been on Park Avenue in a vet practice, you know, making a gazillion dollars, but he

really wanted to be in Maine. And he always had this dream of having elephants, so much so that this little picture of an elephant on the wall in his office, and he told everyone who came in one day, I'm going to take care of elephants here in Maine. Did you think he was crazy the first time he told you? Well, I thought it was unusual. This is Carrie Lurita, Jim's

wife of twenty years. I mean, I just seemed but I'm so used to, you know, off the wall sort of wacky things from him, and he just came at life in a different way, and I believed it. Yes, I thought it was weird and crazy, but I didn't doubt it for a second. Carry first met Jim bringing her ex boyfriend's cat to the clinic. She and that guy eventually broke up, and after just two dates, him and Carrie moved in together, and it was instant and totally meant to be. He was magnetic, He had no

um judgment of anyone. Ever. A couple of years after they met, they got married. They ended up having two boys, Henry and Lewis, And the whole time they were together, Carrie knew that the elephant thing was eventually going to happen, because that's just the kind of guy that he was. Exactly he said he was gonna do something, he did, and if he said he was gonna anything, anything that he said, he followed through on. And so I knew, I knew it would happen. In two thousand and eleven,

it did. We're here in Hugo, Oklahoma to begin the process of moving these animals up to Maine. Uh Rosie and Opal are going to be coming to Maine this week to begin their new life. This is a clip of Jim. He started a YouTube channel with a bunch of videos documenting the elephants. This is one of the first when he and Tom established Hope el Fants in Maine, which was basically an old folks home and rehab center

for retired circus elephants. Their first two elephants were Rosie and Opal, who were from the original herd that Tom and Jim worked within the circus years before. I think they're gonna be very comfortable. They're gonna have an hour and a half of physical therapy a day each. They are going to be exercised regularly. Their feet are going to be worked on every day. Rosie and Opal both had a lot of physical ailments. And we're about fourty years old when they came to Maine, which is pretty

old for elephants. Rosie was very young when Jim first met her in the circus, and out of the twenty six elephants, Jim really bonded with her. She is the elephant that Jim promised he'd come back for all those years ago. Rosie was the first elephant that was a candidate for this, and she had a severe arthritis, so she had a real limb. And she was also an outcast in the herd because she was more interested in people and she was interested in the elephants, and the

other elephants didn't like that. In fact, even when I had her, when she was young, when I was taller than her her, you couldn't walk her past certain elephants. He pushed her around and they would kick at her, and they would throw their trunks at her. And so we said, well that's not a good way to live um. And so we said, can we find a special friend for her, and we did find a special friend and her name is Opal, So she and Opal get along together very well. So Opal was someone who kind of

got along with Rosie. So that's how the decision was made by Jim and the owners of the Elephants that they would come to Maine to go through this rehabilitation and become part of Hope Elephants. I felt an instant connection to Opel. I just remember the eye contact and it was crazy, unbelievable. Oh, she said, to give girl. This is from a video of Carrie holding Opal's trunk and walking with her on a sunny day. Good Jimmy would say she was, you know, she was mischievous, and

he would say she has crazy eyes. It was a little bit of a wild card. But I like that about her. She was spicy, kind of like me, which is probably why we had that instant initial connection. And Rosie was was very sweet and kind of more docile. I just think of her swaying back and forth with her eyes sort of half closed, just just they're you know, comfortable, they're peaceful. And this one is from a clip of Jim spraying Rosy down with cold water. Where all your

friends jealous Oh yeah. They didn't even know what to do with themselves when we brought them over. These are carrying Jim's two boys, Henry and Lewis. Yeah, and Lewis m Jim's youngest son, Um Henry Um the oldest. Both boys are in college, Henry studying zoology just like his dad. But you guys are like the elephant kids. Yeah, yeah, I've got some comments about the smell after goat shoveled down in the morning and aren't eating m classes. It

wasn't like having just regular pets. Rosie and Opal became a huge part of the family's life and became a fixture in the community. Everyone says. They played a lot of tricks on each other and on the family, hiding hay from one another and using their trunks to steal treats from your back pocket when you weren't looking. They even figured out how to turn off the electric fences around the enclosure. They're like two mischievous old ladies. Yes,

that's exactly what they were. Pretty much. Only thing missing was a handbag. We'll get back to the story in a second. First, a word from Express employment professionals. A strong work ethic. It takes pride in a job well done, sweats over the details. This is you. But to get an honest day's work. Do you need a response, you need a call back, you need a job. Express Employment professionals could help because we understand and what it takes to get a job. It takes more than just online

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the production floor to the front office. Express Nose Jobs, get to No Express, find your location at Express pros dot com or on the Express Jobs app. And now back to our story. Hope Elephants was completely open to the public and they'd have school groups and all sorts of people travel from everywhere to see Rosie and Opal and to Jim. It was a lot more than just

a retirement home. The other purpose was education and so that people who came to Hope Elephants walked away thinking, oh my god, this is just so amazing and so cool, and these animals are so beautiful. And the idea was that people would be inspired in some form or in some way to care about elephants through seeing the interaction and trying to preserve elephants or at least bring awareness

of the probable extinction of elephants. The elephant enclosure was literally in carrying Jim's backyard and taking care of them was a ton of work. Would you say your dad was kind of like a workaholic. Yeah, for sure, Like elephants just functioned with the sun. So seven days a week, just down down at desk, he was, you know, all in. I mean if they were if one of them was sick, he'd put a cot up in the barn and you know, spend the night there making sure that they were okay.

Or people used to say, Jim, you need to take a break, you need to come in. You know, he was always in the barn and he didn't have to be. He he wanted to be. I mean, he loved, loved, loved being around them. Jim had a great rapport with them, great rapport. This is Cindy Preventure. I was the other elephant trainer. To keep elephants, you legally have to have a backup handler on call in case of emergency. She's

retired now. She lives in New Hampshire, but she and her son Travis would go up and take care of the elephants with Jim. They became like family. So one night in September of two thousand fourteen, Cindy said that she gave Jim a call to give him crap because her son said that Jim had been working too hard. This was on a Monday night, you know, because he saw my number and he was like, hey girl, because

that's what he all has said. Hey girl. You know one of the elephants had she had a bad belly, and he had been and he had been walking her a little bit and um over the weekend. And my son had mentioned, while, yeah, he's tired, you know, he hasn't gotten much sleep. And we had just had this conversation like weeks prior to you know, you're not alone in this, Like I can come up and help you know, um, so that you're not exhausted whatever. And so he's like, yeah,

I know she's fine, she's better. Now I'm gonna get some sleep tonight because I'm like, I'm on my way, I'm going to grab a bag, and he's like, no, no, you know, we'll see you on Wednesday. And the very next morning, carry called me, Um, could you kind of bring me back to the day that Um? Okay, okay. So the racine was he would go out first first, first thing in the morning, unless he had slept there, and check the girls, give then their hay, give them

their you know, just the usual morning routine. And we had a baby monitor left over from the kids that we had in the living room so that whenever he did come in, he would you know, listen for anything going on out there, any noises or any upset if you know, if they if he left them alone. And I heard him make a bizarre sound, you know, and then he said no Rosie, and I thought, well, that's weird.

And I went out there and the doors locked, I couldn't find the keys, and by the time I got in, he was laying on the ground and both the girls were just you know, in the pen, and he was laying there. Jim his hip was shot and he knew he needed a new hip, and he was always putting it off. And Um, like the last person he ever

took care of was himself. So what I think happened is probably he fell um and I think that Rosie tried to help him up, you know the way an elephant helps another elephant up as they used their foot to sort of you know, pick them up. And I mean, I'm sure she didn't try to hurt him, you know, she tried to help him, but in helping him crushed his crush. It was my freshman year and then I

just popped blame back. You know. It was like a Tuesday, um, and I was like, you know, like woke up early for school and like, um, like heard some stuff going on through the monitor. You know. It was just like right in the right in the heat of it. It was kind of popped underwhere I felt really really protective of the boys and of I don't know, I just wanted to be in a bubble. I didn't want to I didn't want the real world to be out there waiting.

I took a while for to get through that. I remember pulling out of my driveway and I remember pulling up to their house. This again as Cindy, the other elephant trainer. The two elephants were in the outside pasture when I got there, and you know, I just went out. Now, I didn't even call them or anything. I just kind of stood and they both came like walking up and like Rosie was like putting her trunk all over me and chirping and as if to say, like something's wrong,

and they knew. I mean, it took a couple of days for me to even go out there, and then when I did, I didn't want to leave. It was really emotional in a good way. I mean, I missed them, and I could tell they missed me, but it was that much harder because I knew they were leaving so many so many emotions, you know, in all the shock, it was like what are we going to do these animals, and what's the right thing to do? And we quickly realized, okay,

this is it. I mean, we can't go on with Hope elephants and um, they have to go back to Oklahoma, which was always the plan, by the way, and Jimmy had always said, if something happens to me, they need to go back to the herd, and so that's what we did. The rest of Rosie and Opal's original herd that Tom and Jim had worked with in their circus days had retired to a similar organization in Oklahoma called Endangered Arc. Within a few days, they sent up a

truck and Rosie and Ople were on the road south. Yeah. I was sad to see that go, but I don't think it would ever be the same if Jim wasn't there, because like Jim was, like he was a superstar. You know, people die all the time, but not many people touch as many other beings as as Jim did. The memorial for Jim was a massive event, and hope it was even televised. Oh that was wild. I mean, there must have been a thousand people there. I mean, it doesn't

it seems like a fiction. His trajectory in his life. You know, he kind of just had this like magnetism, magnetism about him. You know, it attracted people and to help people together. And that's true both in the context of family and I think the community as well. Um, A lot of the decisions that I make and a lot of the things that are doing a lot of the way I approached the world is a product of how um he did all of those things. I mean, the true, true lesson was that he you know, he

followed his dream. He had that dream since he was young, and he made it happen. Yes, it was horrible and devastating and just shattering, but he you know, he said he was going to do it. It was his dream, and he did it. I mean that that is worth everything, that above all, to have the boys know that, and to know that myself, m he was living his dream, which I don't think very many people can see that.

Even with the hope elephants gone, Rosie and Opal's presence in the town is still felt there and is a big part of their story now, and Jim's work bringing attention to the conservation of elephants reverberates far outside of mains borders. Even National Geographic made a video remembered Jim and all that he did. In two thousand seventeen, Opal passed away at the age of forty eight. Rosie is still living outer years, happily amongst the herd that Jim

first met her in. Jim LaRita was a veterinarian. That was his job, but his real work was providing a window into a world that people hadn't owned before. Something bigger than that. He took a crazy idea and made it into his legacy, a story that will be told by everyone who knew him for years and years to come.

The biggest thing that I got from hearing jim story is I think it's important that instead of who we are being defined by what we do for a living, we really need to start thinking about what we do for a living being defined by who we are. That is how Jim Loreta lived his life. And you've got to wonder what would the world look like if we all pursued work like that. If you had to give a like a ringmaster exit to Jim, how what would

you How would you do it? Probably something like Ladies and gentlemen, the man and the legend, Jim Loreta, He'll be back. There they go, those ponderous pack of darts. Rosie, Opal and Jim huge thanks to the LaRita family, to Cindy Preventure, Marty Lorita and Endangered arc. You can find pictures and videos of Jim, Rosie and Opal on our website Express pros dot com. Slash podcast for On the Job, I'm otus Gray. Thanks for listening to On the Job,

brought to you by Express Employment Professionals. Find out more at Express Pros dot com. This season of On the Job is produced by Audiation and Red Seat Ventures. Our executive producer is Sandy Smallens. Our producer is Otis Gray. The show is mixed by Matt Noble at The Loft in Bronxville, New York. Find us on I Heart Radio and Apple Podcasts. If you liked what you heard, please consider rating or reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts or

wherever you listen. We'll see you next time. For more inspiring stories about discovering your life's work, Audiation