Help Save Charisse's Animals: Memorial Fund

Memorial Fund: Save Charisse’s Animals; Protect Her Assets, Estate, and Remaining Legal Issues; And Keep Roof Over Her Family’s Heads

(Hello, my name is Jonathan (AKA Jonny) Palmer, and I am one of three siblings of my sister, Charisse, who recently, suddenly and unexpectedly passed away. I am the organizer of this account and have created this GoFundMe to help my parents and siblings raise the necessary funds to help save my sister's many farm animals, to find and acquire the necessary legal representation to secure her final estate, and to acquire financial aid to help us withstand the year-long, financial battle we will be facing in the coming months. All funds go to my mother, Charlene Palmer's, bank account, as she has been designated the official 'beneficiary' of this fundraiser. Thank you all so much for your time, kindness, generosity, and support.)

For Our Dearest Charisse

Charisse Palmer R.I.P.

01/04/1991–8/02/2023

The World-Shattering Tragedy

On August 2nd, 2023 this world lost one of its brightest stars when, my dear sister, daughter of Jim and Charlene Palmer—Charisse ‘Serendipity’ Palmer—suddenly and unexpectedly, left this world due to rare complications from treating ongoing medical issues.

I cannot even begin to describe how incredibly painful this has been for me and my family. Charisse was the light of our life and we are barely hanging on and we need the support of the whole community to get through this.

Charisse’s Legacy

As her family, friends and the community knew, Charisse had a huge heart, was so full of joy and care and compassion for others, and could always light up a room with her incredible smile, her enchanting charisma, and her seemingly never-ending quips. But most of all, she had an exuberant and seemingly endless joie de vivre and passion for connecting with human and animal alike. She absolutely adored animals, and she ran several businesses showcasing her lifelong love and devotion to her many four-legged family members.

Ever since she was a little girl, she fell in love with horses. I remember when she was about 7 years old, playing with and caring for her little toy “horsies” and every single year, without relent, she would continue asking Santa for a pony of very own.

She finally realized her childhood dream, after spending countless hours reading innumerable books, finding every opportunity she could to ride, spend time with, feed, groom and and take care of as many horses as she could, until she was eventually able to finally make it her career.

For many years she owned and operated a ranch where she bred, raised, cared for and trained several breeds of horses. She had a natural knack for connecting with these incredible animals. Though it may sound like that old cliché, she quickly ended up with many calling her a “horse whisperer.” She had a very special relationship with these animals.

She also knew the healing power of equine therapy and it was another dream of hers to one day open a facility for at-risk adolescents, as well as for children with autism, and anybody else who might benefit from this wonderful form of therapy.

As you might have already guessed, Charisse had a massive heart for people with disabilities and other mental health issues. However, after realizing the enormous financial costs and lack of resources available at the time, she reluctantly put her Equine Therapy Facility on hold, until a later time, and then decided to focus her energy on her newest business venture—training service dogs for veterans and people with physical and mental disabilities. She knew the incredible healing power that service dogs could provide to those with such needs.

In addition to these two very important passions, Charisse had an incredibly strong bond and deeply spiritual connection with the North American grey wolf. Her latest dream was to raise wolves to help replenish the dwindling wolf population of the Northern United States, Canada and Alaska.

She had only just begun working with the appropriate individuals, organizations, and authorities who could help this dream come to fruition when this world sadly and suddenly took her away from us.

Help Save Charisse’s Animals

After Charisse’s sudden passing, and with little to no knowledge of how to care for these animals ourselves, our family has now been facing the overwhelming tasks of finding proper homes for over a dozen horses, nearly a half dozen service dogs she had been training, and a pack of wolves she was working on contributing to the repopulation effort.

These responsibilities, though by no means exhaustive, include:

In addition to this each of them needs care, love, and attention, as well as attending to and nurturing the unique needs of these gorgeous animals that she was unfortunately no longer able to be there for.

This is a lot of work for anyone to contend with, let alone my maturing parents who personally have very little ranch experience. As now especially as they reckon with the overwhelming tasks of working with the proper individuals and groups involved with finding permanent homes and dwellings for Charisse’s animal family. All, while at the same time, paying for food, vet appointments, and hiring professionals, appraisers and properly trained ranch hands to help with all the additional responsibilities that go along with running a ranch and keeping these animals happy, safe and healthy.

As such, we are spending every waking hour working on these daunting tasks, and our family has lost a great many hours of wages and our remaining resources are dwindling.

We are in need of your loving financial support to help us care for these precious animals until we can find them their proper homes, abodes, and sanctuaries.

We know this is what Charisse would have wanted for them and we ask you to join us in helping honor her memory and fulfilling her final wish.

If we all work together, we know that you and I can make her final dream a reality. We know that Charisse, somewhere out there, will feel all that love and support from you, too.

Help Us Pay the Many Legal Fees to Keep Her Animals Safe and to Secure Her Final Estate

And so now, on top of this devastating, tragic loss being so sudden, we find ourselves at a time when we have very few resources available and our family is struggling. We have never needed your support more greatly. We simply cannot do this alone.

In addition to the high funeral costs, there are mounting, expensive legal fees that will need immediate attention.

Unfortunately, since Charisse was so young, she never left a will or had life insurance, so my parents will need to hire a Probate Attorney, designate an Executor and hire a Co-Executor, as well as, navigate several other complicated legal challenges, requiring many legal fees and most likely hiring further legal and other professional to do so.

There is still an incredible amount of work to do securing Charisse’s estate:

The good news is that by hiring a Probate Lawyer, assigning the Executor and Hiring the Co-Executor, (plus hiring a few other professionals—legal and otherwise), we have an opportunity to save these precious animals, legally protect the remainder of Charisse’s estate and win the ensuing legal battles to follow.

We only need to come up with costs to hire these legal teams and other professionals, and raise enough money for our family to survive in the meantime.

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*(Please note, I wanted to start our first fund raiser goal, “Phase 1: Hiring Our Legal Team”, at a more reasonably priced and achievable goal, so each contributor like you felt like that you were making an actual difference helping us move toward each goal. Plus, I just did not want to overwhelm you with too information.

So, expect there will be 2-3 further “Official Phase Updates.”

These all began as part of a full original post, but I decided it would be better to break it this into a series of “phases”, so it would be easier to understand, process, so you feel like your contribution is more meaningful, as well as to avoid “information-overload.”

I will be posting a Full Transparency of Costs regarding this entire GoFundMe, and referring to the additional financial needs and goals in several “Official Phase Post” updates, over the coming days and weeks or possibly months. So Please Stay Tuned For Those!

This will likely be 3-4 parts or “phases” fund raiser. I invite you and encourage you to go to the distance with us. I will also be posting many “unofficial posts and updates” along the way, and I will personally make every effort to engage your attention all along the way—there are ideas of videos, musical performances, other artistic pieces, and much, much more in the works, so please stick around! I think you’ll be glad you did.

Thank You All With All My Heart—Gratefully Yours, ~Jonny Palmer)

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We only need to come up with costs to hire these legal teams and other professionals, and raise enough money for our family to survive in the meantime.

With your loving support you can help with the daunting, time-consuming, and financially draining task of taking care of the remaining duties regarding Charisse’s estate, the vast amount of legal fees, and helping take care of her many animals.

If you can give anything, no matter how seemingly insignificant, know that we deeply appreciate every gift you can give from the bottom of our hearts! Everything you contribute, helps, so, so much!

If just 2,000 of us give just $5, or 1,000 give $10 we will make our entire goal for “Phase 1” of our fundraiser!

And getting started with Phase 1 is, in some ways the most difficult, and in other ways, the most straightforward part of this process—by hiring our legal team. Then, we can continue throughout the year to on to our Phase 2, 3 and possibly 4, (as will be revealed in upcoming posts) to continue to raise the money to pay for the additional fees to keep our family afloat.

Your gift of $50, $25, $10, and yes, even $5, helps us so, so much, makes it a little bit easier for us to keep going, heals our hearts a little bit at a time, and feels like a warm, tender, loving embrace from your heart to ours.

And please know, even if you are unable to make donation at this time you can still make an amazing contribution, by sharing this GoFundMe on your social media accounts. The more who know about this, the more of a chance we have to reach our goal, so that makes a HUGE difference in our lives!!

A Very Big Thank You

As you now know, dear reader, there are here before us, a multitude of things that have to be done to move through such a powerful and painful tragedy, and we very much appreciate your loving support as we navigate through this heartbreaking, world-shattering, life-altering event.

It really does take the whole community to get through something like this. We can’t imagine doing this without you. But together, we can do this.

Thank you for being there for us during this long arduous, confusing, unpredictable road ahead as we try to heal from this immense shockwave of pain, loss and grief.

We love you all so very much and please know that every contribution helps more than we could ever put into words.

We thank you so much for your ongoing support, as we navigate this terrible, traumatic, tragic loss. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers.

Thank each and every one of you, be safe, love each other and may your kindness and generosity be forever blessed, and returned to you many-fold.

From the Very Bottom of Our Hearts—THANK YOU!!!

Gratefully and Lovingly Yours,

The Palmer Family