photo credit: Victoria Van Thal
Compassion Without Borders founders Moncho and Dr. Christi Camblor
arrive in Santa Rosa from Mexico with their van filled with 43 dogs.

The van pulled in behind the wooden gate at noon sharp to a couple dozen cheering volunteers. It was carrying precious cargo from 840 miles away — 43 dogs in kennels stacked three-high, next to the sleeping bags where the rescue operation’s owners slept during the drive from Mexico back to Santa Rosa. 

Behind the wheel was Moncho Camblor, and in the co-pilot seat his wife, Dr. Christi Camblor, owners of Compassion Without Borders. The organization is an animal rescue outfit that operates on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Moncho and Dr. Christi — as the staff and volunteers affectionately call her — founded the nonprofit in 2001 because they wanted to do something about what they witnessed living in Mexico City.

“The need is so great down in Mexico, so that we could save them and heal them and adopt them out,” Christi Camblor said. “But also we work a lot on the preventative side, through access to free and low cost veterinary care and spay-neuter so that we can get to the root of the problem and try to prevent all this animal homelessness and neglect. So just a desire to do everything we could to alleviate suffering.” 

The dogs they rescue have lived on landfills, been abandoned at cemeteries, or surrendered at the organization’s Mexico shelter. 

“We really try to find the animals that are most in need of help, whether they're sick, injured, starving, and the least likely to get that help due to geographic or financial barriers, and we help those animals,” Christi Camblor said.

A spot on the van under veterinarian Dr. Christi’s care ensures the help is permanent. That’s what volunteer Jessica Adams said she is sure of.

“Every dog that comes into this sanctuary, it is a life forever-changing moment for them. They'll never know neglect. They'll never know abuse,” Adams said. “This sanctuary, Compassions, is here, and they take the worst of the worst, and they bring them back, and if you could see the before and afters, it is just amazing.”

Once they arrive in Santa Rosa, these now-lucky dogs — big or small, furry or wire-haired, barking or silently quivering — all go through the same intake process: they have a glamour shot taken and get weighed. Then they receive flea and tick medication and a heartworm preventative, via either a hot dog or cream cheese treat. Then it’s on to a collar, a name tag and a spot in a specific kennel the Camblors have chosen from the road. 

Volunteers and vet techs like Ambrina Garduno make the fast and 'fur-ious' process work. She cooed over each dog, admiring one trait or another while keeping track of her notes and stacks of medication. She said it’s meaningful for her on multiple levels.

“What really drew me in in the first place was that they not only helped animals that are local, they also helped animals at the border in Mexico that really hit home. Because I am half Mexican,” Garduno said. “I really, really liked that that was their mission, because compassion really shows no borders, and they don't have very many resources over there. And from the videos and everything I've seen, it's pretty heartbreaking. So the fact that they're also helping dogs over there is pretty incredible. That's very unique, I think.”

No one in the organization said they see helping animals in Mexico vs. those in the US as a zero-sum game. 

“It's not an either-or,” Christi Camblor said. “We help animals here. We help animals in Mexico, and the need is so great in Mexico, the suffering is so immense. There's so few resources for those animals that we feel compelled to help them and to help animals in the States, which is exactly what we do.”

The link to Mexico and the adoptions it provides for fuel the other side of their mission: supporting local animals. Thanks to Compassion Without Borders’ mobile vet clinic — named “Esperanza” or “hope” — more than 1,000 local animals and their families benefited from veterinary care last year, according to director of development Megan Gatlin. 

“This is 100% local to Sonoma County. In the Roseland neighborhood...largely it's for things like microchipping, vaccinations, or even just for Dr. Christi to take a look at the animal,” Gatlin said. “It's a really nice way for low income, housed or unhoused people to have access to veterinary care that they otherwise would not.”

Gatlin said in 2023, Camblor and her team on the Esperanza truck provided 806 veterinary wellness exams and spayed or neutered 297 animals.  

“Our main focus of the organization is stopping the problem, so it's going to the communities that they love the animals, but they don't have the means to take care for them medically speaking, and they have to surrender them, and the animal is in a loving home, and it just needs a couple shots and something that couple antibiotics and the animal is fine and being loved by these families,” Moncho Camblor said. 

And the Camblors say Compassion Without Borders’ services aren’t purely medical.

“I think we help to create a more equitable community,” Christi Camblor said. “Because by providing free and low cost access to veterinary care and spay neuter, we make it so that people of all different income levels can have the benefit of a companion animal, which we think is something that everybody should have the right to enjoy.”