What Happened to Virginia Chipurnoi?

Virginia Chipurnoi is the President of the Board of the Humane Society of New York (HSNY), a large and well-funded animal shelter in Manhattan that has come under fire in recent years for warehousing animals. Until 2020, Chipurnoi not only served on the board, but she also volunteered at the shelter four days per week. Her presence helped to ensure that the Executive Director, Sandra DeFeo, and her staff were fulfilling the shelter’s mission to place animals into loving homes.

When COVID shut down the city, Chipurnoi, who is 89 years old, left New York. Former colleagues, who say she was showing signs of dementia in 2019, suspect that she moved to her weekend home in Connecticut, where her family owns a confectionary company called Chipurnoi Candy.

Virginia Chipurnoi, the once active board president of the Humane Society of New York, has been silent amid the four year animal warehousing scandal

In July 2021, whistleblowers at the HSNY informed NYC-based animal advocates that adoptions had come to a virtual standstill 17 months earlier; that many of the animals had been living in cages for months or years; and that the Adoption Center was closed indefinitely to adopters. Several advocates who had a relationship with Chipurnoi attempted to contact her because they knew that she would address the warehousing of animals if she knew it was taking place. Chipurnoi did not respond, and, in 2022, her phone was disconnected.

Pix11, a TV news station in New York, aired a three minute story about the animal warehousing controversy at the Humane Society of New York (click photo to see Pix11 story)

Reporters from Pix11 News, AM New York, NBC and Huffington Post working on stories about the warehousing scandal also attempted to contact Chipurnoi through Chipurnoi Candy, but company representatives indicated that she was unavailable and unreachable.

Virginia Chipurnoi’s daughter, Sarah Gore Reeves, has refused to acknowledge the concerns of advocates despite her close ties to the Humane Society of New York.

Amid growing concerns about the plight of the animals, the HSNY’s former Adoption Director who retired in 2020, Bonnie Tischler, contacted two other board members, Alexandra Rowley and James Gregorio, who is an attorney. Rowley and Gregorio assured Tischler that the whistleblowers and advocates were misinformed, and they promised to provide her with evidence that adoptions were taking place as they had in the past. Two weeks later, Rowley and Gregorio told Tischler that they had resigned from the board and could not provide her with any information. Tischler took this to mean that DeFeo, the Executive Director, refused to release the information or that the information was so damning that Rowley and Gregorio no longer wanted to be affiliated with the HSNY.  Within days, a third board member, C. Jones Perry, resigned. None of the 11 remaining board members, most of whom are elderly and/or live in other states, responded to letters, emails and calls from Tischler and other advocates.

Three members of the board of the Humane Society of New York resigned amid the animal warehousing scandal, James Gregorio, C. Jones Perry and Alexandra Rowley

When advocates realized that the HSNY’s board was effectively defunct and that DeFeo was no longer accountable to the board, they began to publicly question why Mrs. Chipurnoi was still listed as the President and why fundraising solicitations were being sent out in her name. They wanted shelter community stakeholders and members of the public to know that the primary guardrail in place to ensure that adoptions were being facilitated, an active board president, had come down and that DeFeo, who describes the shelter as a “foster home” and cages as “apartments,” was no longer accountable to a board.

In an effort to give the public the impression that Virginia Chipurnoi is still serving as its board President, the Humane Society of New York launched a website in her name.

In response to advocates’ questions about Chipurnoi’s ability to serve as board president, the HSNY has taken steps to give the public the impression that Virginia Chipurnoi is still capable and active. In 2021, a year after Chipurnoi left New York, the HSNY reported on its 990 tax form that she volunteered at the shelter 30 hours/week. In September 2023, the Humane Society launched the website VirginiaChipurnoi.com which features articles with titles like “How to Spot, Treat and Prevent Gastric Dilation and Volvulus in Dogs” and “Why Canine Dental Examinations Are So Important.” Mrs. Chipurnoi is neither a vet nor a vet tech. Even if she was not cognitively impaired, she would not be qualified to write articles about gastric dilation, canine dental exams and yeast infections in dogs. The most recent article, posted on December 12th, encourages people who cannot adopt a dog to foster one, despite the fact that the Humane Society of New York has, to the frustration of shelter animal advocates, a no-foster policy.

The website also claims that Chipurnoi “leads the HSNY in its advocacy against live animal markets, horse slaughter, roadside zoos, canned hunts, and other issues.”  The HSNY doesn’t work on any of those issues, but, even if they did, how could Mrs. Chipurnoi, who went silent almost four years ago, be “leading” these campaigns?

In a meeting with lawyers representing the state Attorney General’s office, which oversees charities in New York, Tischler and the advocates asked if the absence of a functioning board of directors and the organization’s failure to fulfill its mission violate state law. While sympathetic, the lawyers indicated that they would not consider taking enforcement action unless the advocates could provide data on the number of adoptions taking place. While that information is not publicly available because the HSNY is a private charity, advocates did learn that, during a 2022 inspection by New York City’s Department of Health, the HSNY claimed to have facilitated an average of one adoption per week between March and October that year. For a shelter that takes in $3 million in donations each year, is located in a bustling residential area and has the capacity for 125 – 175 animals according to its own tax forms, that number is, according to the advocates, “abysmal.”

In 1975, the New York Times published a story about Virginia Chipurnoi’s wardrobe.