Things Best Left at the Office: Precious

A possibly ongoing feature wherein I catalog the many parts of my job best left unseen by the Nonvoter.

Fact check: Not actually Precious.

It was about a month into my first job as an opposition researcher. I was still learning the ropes, so I got assigned campaign finance. It's a pretty boring job: look at every single entry in a long spreadsheet, assign it an industry, and Google it a bit to see if the person is corrupt. Or an ax murderer.

Or a sodomizer of an 80 pound Rottweiler named Precious.

Yeah, that happened. The name, city and street name matched for an individual who...well I'll let Lexis do the talking:

A 39-year-old city man accused of sexually attacking his neighbor's dog has been ordered to turn over his passport and allow the home where he is living to be inspected for animals before his trial on animal-cruelty charges gets under way.
Jose Rodriguez, dressed in khaki pants, a plaid shirt and tan sweater, stood before Municipal Court Judge Emery Toth yesterday morning as the judge set up a schedule for the case, which has been before the court for several months. Rodriguez failed to attend last week's court session.
Maritza Rosario, owner of Precious, a 5-year-old female Rottweiler allegedly sodomized by Rodriguez, said she was glad some progress was being made in the case. Rosario has been in Municipal Court five times on the matter. [Home News Tribune, 2/4/05]

Obviously I was pretty excited. One month on the job and I had possibly found out that an opponent's contributor (and fundraising host!) sodomized dogs. Yes it was a common name, it was probably a long shot, but who cares! Precious!

So I spent the next eight hours trying to find out the former home address of that guy.

It turned out they were not the same people after all. One Jose Rodriguez, the one who gave money to various politicians, lived four blocks up the road from the Jose Rodriguez who gave illegal carnal attention to Rottweilers. I was so angry at the mismatch that I spent another hour trying to prove that he could have, like, moved up the road to escape notice the first four times he assaulted Precious.

But no. Different people. The campaign won, but in the usual way involving having more money and votes and such. There was no spectacular canine-related meltdown.

It was only when I relayed this tale to a friend later that I realized I was deeply upset that someone had not raped a dog.