Jerrica Liao strives to maintain the same routine every day: attending school, practicing fencing  and spending time with her dogs—three to be exact.

She has been a pet owner since the fourth grade, having adopted her first pomeranian mixed chihuahua at the age of nine and recently adopted two toy poodle siblings this past November. Because her mother cared for a dog during her own childhood, Jerrica has been an enthusiastic advocate for the animal community growing up, leading her a year ago to become a member of Love & Second Chances, a program whose goal is to help “death-row, abused, and neglected dogs find forever homes.”

“My mother kind of just explained we were going to join a foster program, and then then I was like, ‘That’s pretty dope, dude’ and then I was like ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’ I mean, I love dogs, so of course I would [become a foster],” she said.

The organization Love & Second Chances cares for dogs of all sizes and breeds, but Jerrica and her mother focus on nurturing the small and medium-sized animals.

“Basically, [the program focuses on] street dogs in Taiwan, because there’s a lot of them that get abandoned, and then there’s ones that get mistreated and ones that are used just for breeding. They get saved, nursed back to health, and then they get sent here, and we foster them and then people adopt,” she said.

Since the dogs available for fostering come from the streets of Taiwan, Jerrica visits the San Francisco International Airport (SFO) approximately every two months to pick up new dogs that are sent over. These animals have already been nurtured back to health in care facilities in Taiwan, and Jerrica takes on the responsibility of finding these dogs a safe, new home.

“I remember I went to the airport once with my mother to pick up the dogs. They just get pushed out in their little crates, but there’s like 20 of them, so it’s pretty hectic and everyone’s looking at us, but it’s pretty cool,” she said.

Jerrica has found success in utilizing various avenues of social media to find potential families for the dogs she fosters. Her mother posts on Facebook, and Jerrica reaches out through Instagram or word of mouth in her community. Before finalizing an adoption, interested parties fill out multiple surveys so that Jerrica and her mother can determine whether they are suitable to adopt.

“We have to interview them first, and they need to fill out a questionnaire and see if they qualify. For example, we make sure their yard fence is complete so the dog won’t run away. We also make sure they have experience, even without experience is fine, but they have to list how they are going to take care of the dog if something happens,” Jerrica’s mother, Jessie Ma, said.

After fostering two toy poodle siblings for nearly four months, Jerrica decided to adopt them into her own family, resulting in her having three dogs running around in her household.

“Jerrica plays around with the dogs and feeds them and trains them a little, not too much, and makes sure the dogs can be with the family well,” Jerrica’s father, William Liao, said. “She’s sweet; she loves dogs; she has patience.”

Despite the time and effort Jerrica must put into training and caring for her own dogs and those she fosters, she relishes the feeling of knowing she has contributed to bettering the lives of mistreated animals as part of a rescue and foster group.

“I love dogs, and every single time I see a stray dog, I just want to take it home. In a sense, I get to do that through [Love & Second Chances] because I get to foster dogs that need help. Knowing that you’re able to change a dog’s life because they came from such a terrible place, and they’re abused, and that you’ve basically saved a life or you’ve at least changed their life, is what makes fostering worth it.”