Jamie Katz has spent the past decade tracking lost pets across South Florida. She started in 2014 after helping a friend find her missing cat, a favor that became a full-time job and she’s since worked more than a thousand cases. To work professionally, she became a licensed private investigator specializing in animals instead of people.
She’s closed about 67% of her cases and offers two services: on-location and off-location searches.
For off-location searches, Katz guides clients remotely, designing posters, mapping where they should go, and sharing a short tutorial on how to assemble them. “I make it impossible for anyone to drive in or out of a certain radius without seeing that pet’s face,” she told WLRN.
READ MORE: Conservationists sue to stop Florida's first black bear hunt in a decade
On-location searches, mostly within South Florida’s tri-county area, include all that plus Katz and her three tracking dogs.
Once on a case, she builds a pet profile by asking about the animal’s size, temperament, and whether it’s microchipped in order to shape her search strategy.
Katz’s newest mission: Stopping Florida’s bear hunt
Florida’s first black bear hunt in nearly a decade is set for three weeks in December 2025. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) voted in August 2025 to reopen the hunt, the first since 2015, saying it would help manage bear populations and “provide access to the resource.”
The agency’s most recent statewide estimate, from 2015, counted about 4,050 bears.
The decision drew backlash from wildlife advocates and groups opposed to the hunt. In response, several launched a campaign ahead of the permit lottery, which took place in September, encouraging non-hunters to apply for licenses, to keep them out of hunters’ hands.
Among those leading the effort to sign up non-hunters was Steve Rosen, an animal rescuer and founder of Angels in Distress.
Rosen enlisted Katz for help processing the growing number of applications. He was creating accounts and buying licenses for hundreds of non-hunters, and Katz stepped in to help enter their data and submit the forms through the FWC’s system.
Even though there are no bear-hunting zones in South Florida, Katz said that didn’t matter to her. “I don’t care where they are,” she said. “It was like, ‘Oh, we’re going to help bears? Let’s go’”
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission reported in September more than 160,000 applications were submitted for just 172 available tags.
Rosen’s campaign, with help from Katz, led to 42 of the available hunting tags going to non-hunters.
“I didn’t know how into it I was going to get,” she said. “But if you love animals, you care about animals, it doesn’t really matter what kind of animal it is. An animal is an animal.”
