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SLO Village’s Own Dr. Dolittle
By Randy Murray
In the legendary 1967 film “Dr. Dolittle,” Rex Harrison sings the Oscar-winning “Talk to the Animals.”
“Walk with the animals, talk with the animals, grunt with the animals, squawk with the animals,” he intoned.
What you might not know until now is that SLO Village has its very own Dr. Dolittle, and her name is Sharon Chandler.
For more than a decade, she was the woman who did it all for Lion Country Safari, the drive-through animal park in Laguna Hills that attracted millions of visitors from 1970 to 1984.
Sharon began as a receptionist and secretary but rose to positions of responsibility for marketing, sales and public relations, traveling throughout this country and to South America and Europe to create interest among travel agents and tourist transportation companies in making the park a destination for their clients.
And as often as possible, she had an animal in tow.
She has ridden elephants, walked tigers down boulevards in Los Angeles and fended off a chimpanzee in her office.
If she didn’t quite talk to the animals, she came to understand and appreciate them in what some might consider a really fun job.
The elephant ride came during a half-time show at an LA Rams game.
“It was a cute baby Asian elephant with course hair,” Sharon recalled. “The elephant had to keep his head up or I would have fallen off.”
“’Up, up,’ I commanded, holding on for dear life.”
She walked in many parades and presided over many stage presentations. Most of the time,
“I would have an animal with me,” she said.
She credited the stage experiences for helping her overcome her innate shyness.
An yes, there were times when things went awry.
She recalled working the Garden Grove Strawberry Festival with a 7-month-old lion cub. She immediately broke out in a rash and learned that she was allergic to lions. She observed that lions are not the cleanest cats in the jungle.
Early on when she was new with the company, a man came in with a chimpanzee and ask her to watch it for a minute. “Don’t give him eye contact,” the man warned.
“I didn’t feel safe,” Sharon said. “I ran to my office. The chimp followed me. I was in there, and he was in there sitting on my desk. The phone rang, and he lost interest in me.”
“I didn’t like chimpanzees much,” she said. “They’re kind of icky.”
She later worked as a technical writer for a company called American Hospital Supply where she was assigned to the cardiac division and recalls researching and writing about artificial heart valves. At the time, there was interest in using tissue from pigs to create the valves. And so she continued her long professional association with animals.
Born in Alameda but growing up in Auburn Hills and the Central Valley, Sharon is a seventh-generation Californian. Her great-grandfather, an East Coast ship captain, began the migration to California about 1849. The family, named Turner, largely settled in Merced and Mariposa counties.
Sharon moved to San Luis Obispo about 10 years ago. Her daughter and son-in-law, Kathryn and Ryan Teale, live in Paso Robles and have given Sharon two granddaughters, Emery, 11, and Ainsleigh, 6.
Sharon, who considers herself primarily a writer. earned a BA degree at Long Beach State but has pivoted from “right brain to left brain” and, with the aid of an AA degree in interior design, is helping people in her neighborhood and others with color concepts and space design. She is considering offering her talents to members of SLO Village.
She has been a member of SLO Village since a caretaker talked glowingly to her about the organization. She has used it for transportation and for help in her garden. “I have a lot of flowers, mostly in pots,” she admitted.
“SLO Village is perfect for me.” she said.
And does our own Dr. Dolittle still talk to the animals? Well, yes, one at least, a 13-year-old cat named Little One. According to Sharon, they talk all the time, and she assures us the conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue.
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