For a long time, Jarrod Cooper wouldn't tell anyone at the Oakland Animal Shelter what he did for a living. He wasn't there as an NFL player, as the anti-Michael Vick. He had a pretty good idea that if the league wanted someone to do spin control, he wouldn't be the first choice for the job.
The Raiders had started their season without Cooper, while he served a four-game suspension for a positive steroid test. He doubted that he would return the field. It would be so easy to write off a special-teams player, even a great one, if his name was linked to any type of scandal.
He needed something to fill his time, to distract him from the disturbing thoughts that filled his head and to begin building a future without football. So he arrived at the shelter like any other volunteer. The staff members didn't ask too many questions about the heavily muscled young man with elaborate tattoos, but they did find him intriguing.
"He'd drive up in this nice car. He had all this time," volunteer coordinator Megan Webb said, laughing. "We had no idea."
Cooper returned to the Raiders, and everyone at the shelter figured out who he was late in the season, when he got hurt and arrived to volunteer on crutches. By then, he was hooked on the place. He had become the perfect antidote to Vick and his sadistic dogfighting ring - a pro athlete who owned big dogs and, more and more every day, devoted the fierce intensity cultivated by football to the cause of protecting animals.
"When I first came here, I'd see a mean dog, I'd say what's wrong with that dog? And now if I would see a mean dog, I think, 'Who did that to this animal?' " he said. "The dogs only do what you train them to do."
Almost on cue, a roaming cat jumped into Cooper's lap as he began the interview. The two-hour visit dispelled any suspicions that he volunteers here for show, as perfunctory public service. He and Webb bantered constantly about various animals, from the puppy that had been thrown against a wall to Rambo, a dog that had arrived months earlier with a mile-long disobedient streak and, after a committed effort by everyone at the shelter, had been adopted out the day before with a reformed attitude and a new name, Riley.
Cooper brought out his digital camera to find a picture of Riley. As he clicked from frame to frame, he passed pictures of a huge red sore on a dog's shin and of himself planting his handprint in newly poured concrete in the shelter's backyard. Cooper is financing the construction of outdoor kennels so that the dogs can spend time in fresh air and sunshine without having to wait for volunteers to take them out individually.
Later, Cooper peeled away from a tour of the facilities with a Chronicle photographer and reporter so that he could "take care of Bob," a man waiting for him in the lobby. Webb explained that Bob was the concrete guy. "Jarrod has to write him a check," she said.
He also is underwriting a workshop this month on how to identify and cultivate task-oriented dogs that are too hyperactive to be house pets but often make perfect worker animals, performing search-and-rescue duties or herding cattle. Experts from Texas are flying here to lead the discussion.
Yet Cooper's checkbook, Webb insists, isn't half as active as he is. He cleared out the back area before construction started on the kennels, and he put hours into cleaning up a barn by Lake Merritt, which the shelter owns but can't use to full advantage. His girlfriend, Erica Arana, said she barely saw him some days because he'd go to physical therapy in the morning, then spend the afternoon and evening at the shelter, sometimes returning home as late as 8 p.m.
"People save the animals, and the animals save people," he said, "and once you see that and experience it, you're stuck here. I'm stuck now."
Cooper ranks second among the volunteers in terms of hours served, Webb said, bringing out the football player's competitive side.
"Really No. 1," he said, flashing an impish smile at Webb. "Martha doesn't count anymore. She works here now."
As a college student, Cooper wanted to train for veterinary school, but the workload didn't fit with his football schedule. He now is certain that his future outside sports will be devoted to animal welfare. Working with Bad Rap, a nonprofit that promotes proper treatment of pit bulls, he has committed himself to helping pet owners understand and fulfill their responsibilities. He started an organization called Code 597, named for the California penal code against cruelty to animals, and recruited seven other Raiders to help, including Nnamdi Asomugha and Justin Fargas.
"I always use myself as an example. When I was growing up, I thought it was OK to chain your dog up and then go to work or go to school. I'd be gone from 7 to 5 at night because I had track practice," he said "You don't think about it. Your dog knocks over his food or his water. He's sitting there for 12 hours without any water. That's not how you take care of your animal."
Code 597 will help equip owners with better restraining devices, perhaps a crate or a dog run, plus neutering services or microchips that help locate lost animals. Cooper owns two Presa Canarios, Kaine and Kristo, huge dogs that, under the wrong supervision, can become very dangerous. Cooper initially thought about breeding them for profit; within in a week of volunteering at the shelter, he said, he had them fixed.
"I think I wanted to get the big dogs for a macho thing," Cooper said. "That's not a very educated reason to get a big dog. ... Thank God it got corrected by volunteering here. It probably saved me and my dogs."
The shelter work acted like therapy, Cooper said, during his suspension. He had been in trouble before, getting jailed and suspended after two DUI arrests and generally failing to ground himself. After he started volunteering, "you could really see a difference in him," said Arana, who began dating him two years ago. "It was like he'd found his place."
He likes to compare himself to a cartoon character. "You know when the Grinch had a small heart, and then his heart grew big?" he said. "You do lose your way once you're in the NFL for a while. Your sense of reality starts to get a little skewed."
"You're in another world," Arana interjected.
"Yea," he said, "you are. And this place just kind of put me back in the real world. Helping people, it just kind of opened me up, made me have maybe a little more feelings. Kind of the Grinch syndrome."
In light of Vick's guilty plea, the NFL probably could use a little Dr. Seuss in its game. Cooper hopes to take Code 597 to league headquarters someday and advance the cause throughout the league. But he's in no hurry. He wants to make things work here first, be sure that the program serves pets and their owners before it becomes an NFL enterprise. Anything less would be a show, and when Cooper doesn't want to be on stage. He's stuck in another world, and he really likes it there.
