We were lucky to catch up with Vicki Anderholt recently and have shared our conversation below.

Vicki, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’re complete cheeseballs and so we love asking folks to share the most heartwarming moment from their career – do you have a touching moment you can share with us?

The day I inherited a baby bunny totally by mistake changed my life forever, I had prayed 7 years earlier for God to help me become an expert in something I could do from home and all of a sudden this little cottonball became a part of my life totally unexpectedly. Within 3 yrs I had become a rabbit rescue – in 7 yrs I became a nonprofit and today I run a sanctuary- all because a tiny bunny was given to me accidentally.

Vicki, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

How It Came To Be

Once upon a time, long, long ago – last century actually – soon after I had became a believer, I said a prayer to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It went something like this:

“Dear God,
I do NOT want to work in an office. I have NOT worked in an office for 20 years!
I wanted to be a Mom. Please don’t make me work outside the home!
Can’t you please just make me an expert in something I can do at home?
Please God?
Amen”

It was during an unhappy period, when I was unwillingly moving to a city I thought was worse than hell…Los Angeles.
My three girls were beginning their teenage years, and the country we were moving to was not our home.
We had been living overseas since they were toddlers. On top of which, the computer age had been ushered in during the last decades, and I knew nothing about it!

I was almost finished raising my kids and I didn’t end up having to work outside the home. I praised God and thanked him for that! I forgot about my prayer. My oldest daughter went off to college. My middle daughter finished high school.

My youngest daughter was turning 15, and I took her and 5 girlfriends downtown to the garment district in Los Angeles on a Saturday morning. I gave each girl $25 with instructions to buy a dress, shoes, and jewelry to wear out to a birthday dinner at a nice restaurant. No one could spend more than the $25.

While the girls shopped, I walked around Santee Alley and kept my eye on them. As they made their purchases, they would come show me, and we would all exclaim at the cool things one could find for so little money.

Three quarters of the way through our shopping day, one of the girls (Lilly) came to me with a tiny little cage with a carrot and lettuce and the tiniest little bunny I had ever seen inside. It was all white with teeny brown spots and the softest fur! I had never seen a baby bunny this close up, and never one this tiny! It was precious and irresistible. I could totally understand her buying it. All the girls oooohed and ahhhhed at the bunny. We all took turns holding it.

We finished shopping and piled into the car to head home. While the girls did their hair and got dressed, I made a little home for the baby bunny in the downstairs shower stall. I gave him a litter box and carrots and lettuce, and a little rug and blanket.

We went out for a wonderful dinner. The girls all looked marvelous! Afterwords the parents came to pick up their daughters. When Lilly’s Dad arrived, he took one look at the rabbit and said, “No way! We have 2 dogs at home. You let her buy it, you’ll have to keep it!” So, that was that.

I named it Lilly after Lilly!

My husband was adamantly opposed to another pet. We had 4 Devon Rex cats already, one for each female in the household. He wasn’t really an animal person to begin with!

I didn’t know anything about bunnies except that they were awfully cute. But I looked for a home for Lilly and within 2 weeks I had found 2 church families with children that wanted her. Only by then, somehow…… I had fallen helplessly, hopelessly in love with that little lagomorph!

I knew nothing about bunnies, so I just took her everywhere with me. She was so tiny she fit in my pockets. I bought a clear see-through vinyl purse at a thrift store and picked up some facecloths to line the bottom of it. Lilly went everywhere I went, slung over my shoulder in her window bag. We went shopping, to doctors appointments, and on trips.

On a trip to Saratoga for a conference, she lay peacefully in her cage for the long drive and at rest stops I put her in a tiny little harness attached to a leash to let her walk around and stretch. In Saratoga, she lay quietly on my lap during the conference I was attending and at snack and lunchtime, she sat with me next to a fountain with a mermaid on it. She loved sitting next to the mermaid. She never wanted to leave the fountain. I think she was falling in love with the mermaid.

When we returned to Los Angeles and went to our first vet appointment, I found out the truth!

I think she HAD fallen in love with that beautiful mermaid in Saratoga! Lilly was a little BOY! I was so used to her name by then, it was hard to change it. But Lilly is no name for a boy! So I decided on Leo. It took me a long time to make the change, it kept coming out of my mouth as Leelo, a silly sounding combo of Lilly and Leo.
(Leo passed away at 12 yrs of age).

If you could go back, would you choose the same profession, specialty, etc.?

Yes absolutely. I’ve never learned as much as when I have run an animal rescue. This has given me an amazing chance to make a real difference for rabbits. I hope I can write a book about it so people can know how difficult it is for rabbits.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

A few years ago we took on an overwhelming case where a girl had bought two rabbits to let run in her yard for fun and 6 months later had 60 bunnies. They were injured and had infections of all kinds (in their eyes, ears and also body wounds. Some of their ears were cut up into strands from the fights…… they were so beaten up – fighting each other for territory and covered in mites and fleas . The local shelter offered to euthanize most of them! I offered my help. 😂 It took months and months of time and money to fix this,. A friend and Angel with a successful YouTube channel stepped in to help-she made a video of the story and put it up.
It brought in over ten thousand dollars in two weeks! Which was amazing. We could not have done anything without that help!
It ended up costing over 15 thousand dollars to get them all spayed and neutered and get them the medical attention they needed. I could write a whole book on just that case.
You can see the video about it .
I’ll try to put the link at the end.

Contact Info:

• Website: Adoptabunnyrabbit.org
• Instagram: Adoptabunnyrabbit.org
• Facebook: Adoptabunnyrabbit.org
• Other: TikTok Adoptabunnyrabbit

Image Credits
Vicki Anderholt Video link for case story = ♥️Winnetka 60 bunny Case: https://youtu.be/ylxVJcXN2TY