National Volunteer Month: Celebrate Thousand Hills Pet Resort's dedicated volunteers

At Thousand Hills Pet Resort, we have a team of volunteers for social media marketing, weeding, office work, and laundry. We also have Volunteer Dog Play Yard Supervisors, who spend time with the dogs to give them additional human attention and take photos for our daily updates. 

With April being the National Volunteer Month, we’d like to share a little about our volunteers.

Ursula Bishop

Originally from Dublin, Ireland, Ursula Bishop and her family have called San Luis home for nearly 26 years. Ursula was a pre-health advisor at Cal Poly for many years and then worked in the Cuesta Nursing Program for 10 years. These days, you can find her at Crossfit Inferno, where she’s been working out for 14 years. At Thousand Hills Pet Resort, Ursula has helped with the boarding area and laundry and has now taken on database work. This has been a tremendous help for the office staff. Aside from volunteering her time at Thousand Hills Pet Resort, Ursula is a bell-ringer at Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa, where they still ring the bells by hand. There are many different patterns rung on the five brass bells whose beautiful notes resound through the town.

Ursula was first a client of Thousand Hills Pet Resort and has been bringing her dogs here since the early days. Her two current Australian Shepherds, almost 12 years old and 10 months old, come for doggie daycare and boarding. The puppy has also taken classes and socialization sessions with Gentle Touch and Ursula is looking forward to trying agility with her. She loves what Thousand Hills Pet Resort and all the partner programs are doing, with the ultimate mission of bringing service dogs at no cost to Veterans and First Responders living with PTSD.

Cassie Guido

Cassie Guido is another volunteer who was first a Thousand Hills Pet Resort client. She can see how her dogs love it here and she supports all the Son Care programs. She’s also fallen in love with the people and has gotten to know them outside of the office. Cassie has come to all of the New Life K9s’ annual fundraising event, Giving Paws for Hope. She participated in the live auctions, winning bids on house painting, a dumpling-making class, and a package that includes daycare passes. As a volunteer, Cassie helps with cleaning and laundry as well as with ad hoc projects, such as making treats for the recent Pi Day event. 

Justin Jia

Justin Jia, currently a Sophomore majoring in Economics at Cal Poly, is one of our newest volunteers. Initially, he wanted to volunteer to fulfill an assignment for a class and since starting, he found that he wanted to volunteer less for the sake of his class requirement and more for a sense of fulfillment. He has shared that he enjoys being in our idyllic setting and that he feels good doing something physical.Right from the start, Justin has taken initiative to come in whenever he had time and do some much-needed weeding. He also came in on the weekend to help the Volunteer Coordinator with a large volunteer group. When we have many volunteers come in at one time, we are able to tackle projects throughout the property. Smaller groups helped co-founder Karen Gould with the rose bushes, weeded the daycare yards, and built play structures in boarding. Justin helped to coordinate the groups and shuttled between them, rolling up his sleeves to work.

Libby DeKorte

Libby DeKorte is a blog writer volunteer who started July, 2025. She’s shared that she has found inspiration through her volunteer work here and has made meaningful connections within the community. She brings curiosity and a genuine love for people and animals to everything she does. Passionate about writing, she enjoys capturing stories that uplift others, while her love of teaching allows her to share knowledge in ways that feel engaging. Guided by values centered on healing and service, she recognized a natural alignment with our mission and daily work. 

Sinead McVey

Sinead McVey is our social media volunteer. Since November 2025, Sinead has been coming in to take videos for our Marketing Manager and posting on our social media channels like Instagram. Hailing from Half Moon Bay near San Francisco, she is currently a fourth year Cal Poly student majoring in English.

“I love volunteering for Thousand Hills Pet Resort because hanging out with the dogs always brightens my day!” - Sinead. 

Thousand Hills Pet Resort is a program of Son Care Foundation, Inc., which is a 501c(3) nonprofit organization. All profits made from Thousand Hills Pet Resort go to support our other nonprofit programs, including New Life K9s and Son Care Mentoring.

Your pet's daycare, boarding, grooming, and training help our mission of fostering hope, empowering and saving lives through practical mentorship and the healing power of the human-canine bond! 

For volunteer opportunities, please visit our website or contact our Volunteer Coordinator at Volunteer@SonCareFoundation.org for more information.