Heartland Animal Shelter in Wheeling honors sanitation worker who helped save 101 pets after shelter flooded

Three times a week, Antun "Tony" Maticic arrives in the early morning hours at Heartland Animal Shelter as part of his trash collection rounds. As soon he gets to the Wheeling shelter, he waves to the five or six cats hanging out in the large front window.

But as soon as he pulled up in the parking lot one Wednesday morning late last month, he immediately knew something was wrong. He noticed about 2 feet of water “cascading” out the front door and a lot more cats in the window.

“There were 30 of them all trying to get on top of each other, because there's something really wrong,” said Maticic, 55, of Belvidere. “I could see the fear in their faces.”

That’s when he called 911, and firefighters arrived within minutes to evacuate the animals. Had he arrived an hour later, it might have been a different story.

Maticic, a sanitation worker with Waste Management, was honored by the shelter Wednesday for taking action so quickly.

“In many cases, some of the animals, had we waited much longer, probably would have drowned [if Maticic hadn’t arrived when he did],” said Jenny Schlueter, executive director of Heartland Animal Shelter. “We're just so grateful, he probably saved a lot of lives.”

About 101 lives — 25 dogs and 76 cats — to be exact, including a handful of sick kittens fighting a respiratory infection. The kittens were sent to an animal shelter, and the other pets were placed in foster homes and other shelters. Several have been adopted in the past few days, Schlueter said.

A week after the flood, the shelter is still assessing the damage and losses, including specialized medical equipment and computers that will need to be replaced. The building's walls are in good condition, Schlueter said, but the area in the back of the building where the pipe burst has a concrete floor that will need to be repaired and the room torn up. The shelter may be back in operation by early fall.

Trent Sprague/For the Sun-Times

"We are asking for monetary support because we are having to replace just about everything, and we have so many unknowns," Schlueter said. "I feel like every single day that we come here, we realize something else that we need in order to continue operating. And so any little bit helps at this time, just so that we can keep going."

The shelter, which rescues about 1,000 animals a year, has set up temporary operations at several locations, primarily out of space at an airport hangar at Chicago Executive Airport donated by Signature Aviation.

Maticic left when the fire department arrived, but returned later in the day to make sure the animals survived. “I came back and there was all this water in the parking lot, in the street, about 6 inches of water, and all their toys and stuff that floated away,” he recalled.

That was the first time Schlueter met Maticic.

"I could see when he showed up, that he genuinely cared. And I think he was really interested in making sure that nobody got hurt. That really touched me. It just ... touches me to see that kind of human-animal bond, and to see the impact our animals make," Schlueter said.

For Maticic, he wasn’t looking for accolades. He didn’t even tell many people, just a co-worker and his wife, who posted about his pet-saving heroics on Snapchat.

“All this stuff just doesn't hit you until you realize how many lives you did save. And most times, I prefer opinions from the four-legged ones than the two-legged ones, because those will love you forever,” said Maticic, who has two “awesome” German shepherds named Maximus and Achilles. “It's just the lives that I saved that's gratitude enough, it's just incredible.”

Trent Sprague/For the Sun-Times