Riverhead Move the Animal Shelter group to present town with $73,000 check at ‘Last Bow-Wow’ event Friday night

After nearly six years of tireless fundraising and advocacy, Denise Lucas is packing up her dog toys and calling it quits. For real.

The Riverhead Move the Animal Shelter founder is having a final party — the “Last Bow Wow” — Friday evening at Polish Hall to celebrate the group’s accomplishments with her friends and supporters.

Lucas, who started fundraising on Labor Day in 2011, said she feels satisfied she’s accomplished her goals.

On Friday evening, she’ll be presenting the town with a $73,000 check to put toward renovating the Pfeiffer community center in Calverton, the future home of the Riverhead Town Animal Shelter.

Over the last six years, Lucas has raised the funds needed to complete a variety of projects to make life better for animals in the town — and not just the dogs at the town shelter. It was a visit to the cramped shelter on Youngs Avenue that inspired the Riverhead woman to raise money to get the town to move the shelter to a new location.

Soon thereafter Lucas took on projects like the dog parks at Stotzky Park in Riverhead and at Veterans Memorial Park in Calverton. Her group raised the funds to build lean-to structures at the Youngs Avenues shelter, to provide the dogs there with much-needed shade.

In 2015, Lucas announced she was ending her fundraising efforts for a new town animal shelter after she grew frustrated with town officials. She said then that they had “dismissed” her plan to have the Pfeifer center in Calverton renovated into an animal shelter by volunteers she recruited from private businesses and labor unions, using materials she said area businesses had agreed to donate.

Lucas then refocused her organization to help other organizations, including animal welfare and veterans groups. On Friday evening, RMTAS will give $500 checks to six organizations: R.S.V.P., Maureen’s Haven, the Riverhead VFW, the Riverhead Police Department K9 unit, East End Hospice and Spirit’s Promise Horse Rescue.

If the town doesn’t use the money for the new animal shelter within two years, the funds will be forfeited and donated to R.S.V.P., Lucas said. RMTAS has retained the Twomey Latham law firm to handle the transfer of funds to the town and dissolution of the nonprofit group.

RMTAS already paid $3,750 to prepare permit applications to the county and state for the renovation of the Pfeiffer center, which is located on the former Grumman site and is inside the Wild, Scenic and Recreational Rivers Act boundary. A DEC permit under that law is required.

Riverhead Town Supervisor Sean Walter said today the DEC will issue the permit as soon as the Suffolk County health department approves it. The town is waiting on the health department to act, he said.

“The town is very grateful for the work Denise has done over the years and for the donation her organization is making for the new shelter,” Walter said.

The donation will not cover entire cost of the renovation of the community center for use as an animal shelter, the supervisor said. He said the health department will most likely require the installation of an advanced onsite wastewater treatment system, which he estimated would cost about $30,000 to $40,000.

“We had hoped they’d allow us to use the existing septic system on site, but that seems very unlikely now,” Walter said. The county has been pushing for the installation of the new advanced systems as a water quality protection initiative.

Lucas, who recently retired from Otis Ford, where she worked as a parts salesperson, said she’s going to focus her energies on a second career: selling cars at Riverhead Buick-GMC.

“It’s been an amazing roller-coaster ride,” she said today of her experience trying to get a new animal shelter built. In the midst of it all, Lucas even dealt with a cancer diagnosis in 2014 that required surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

But Lucas is not the kind of person to let a thing like cancer keep her down.

“She is certainly a force to be reckoned with,” Walter said today.

He reflected on their first meeting. “One day I got in my car outside town hall and she pulled up her truck and blocked me in,” Walter recalled. “I said to myself, ‘Who the heck is this?’ I couldn’t get out. She had a captive audience.”

The woman behind the wheel of the truck came over to his car and said, “I’m Denise Lucas and I want you to move the animal shelter.”

And that’s how her six-year mission began.

Lucas is hoping to fill the house at Polish Hall Friday night. Tickets are $12 each and cover Kielbasa sandwiches or a cheeseburger, chips and a pickle. There will music by “Make Some Noise” DJ Phil Schmitt and a cash bar. (Tickets can be reserved by emailing Denise@RMTAS.org or calling 516-768-7467.)

“It’s just a party to celebrate and thank our supporters. We won’t be doing any fundraising,” Lucas said.

“Well, maybe one last raffle,” she quickly added.