“If you can recover a lost animal by walking down the street, whistling and putting a leash around its neck, we’re not needed,” says Naumann, who also owns a pet resort with her husband, Roger, and oversees a HARTT shelter that’s helped care for many of the animals HARTT has rescued.

HARTT covers the wide expanse of Maricopa County, roughly 9,200 square miles, and have provided incalculable comfort not only for pets but dog owners such as Cheryl Heflin, 67, whose 5-year-old chihuahua, Sheba, wriggled out of her harness during a walk after a dog frightened her, and ran off into the desert at the end of March. “The thought of her outside with coyotes and owls, I was sick,” says Heflin. “The thought she was in danger and may be suffering was awful.”

On the fourth day that Sheba went missing, HARTT volunteers trapped her following a tip from a park worker who spotted the hungry pup. Says a grateful Heflin: “They’re heroes for what they did.”

For more on HARTT pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.

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