All adoption stories have a lot of joy in them for us at Dotaku, but I suppose one or two stand out.
We had a seemingly lost and quite old Mawile handed in to us, clear care put into their lifestyle, it's teeth were in good condition for its age, it had no illness, clear and soft skin, creeping joint aches but it was to be expected for the pokemon age, but it had no pokeball, so no trainer ID to return them to.
We expected someone to come for it, we even put out posters on the mainland to help find its trainer, but no one came forward. We eventually posed the topic of rehoming to the pokemon and it firmly refused, we did not bring it up again. This pokemon would sit every time people came off the boats at the dock as if waiting for someone, and each time would walk away dissapointed.
Five years passed, it had never given us trouble, was well behaved and kind in nature, even partook in plnety of island events with time, became one of the permanent fixtures here.
And then out of the blue, an old woman turned up with her grandson, visitors. We were made aware of the dimensia she was living with just in case she wandered off, and catered to it no problem. Staff report that she walked around without issue, enjoyed the grounds just line anyone else, until that is, she spotted this one Mawile, and the pokemon saw her, the two had a moment of recognition.
Theyre both in tears as soon as they reach eachother, the Mawile ran for this woman, we didnt know if it was hostile or not at first, but nope, there as a big hug shared and progressive tears. The grandson filled us in that his grandma use to have a partner but came from a village that just lived with pokemon, no balls, no fancy items, just a mutual choosing. But the Mawile had been stolen by a young trainer passing through years ago, with no pokeballs to stop the capture process, the boy assumed someone caught the pokemon and left with it, seperating the pair. It was kind of the one thing his Grandma would always look for in her later years, forgetting that she'd lost her beloved partner, becoming increasingly worried repeatedly as her illness worsened over the years. It caused a lot of grief.
we can only assume the pokemon got free or released, and was handed in to the island as a "difficult case" due to its reluctance to listen to others.
The woman went home with her pokemon, reunited after 5 long years apart, it brought a tear to plenty of the staff's eyes thats for sure.
On the opposing end we've had plenty of shady folk come in and try to adopt from us, but theres a few measures we put in place when were suspicious. I dont discuss the security precautions we apply in these cases to hide the pricess and keep the pokemon and staff safe here.
Despite this, one or two slip the net on rare occasion, it happens, were not perfect. One that stays with me was a woman who came in to look for a partner, making all the best attempts to charm a quite fantastic little Treeko, a rare variant with fantastic leopard markings. She was forthright and seemed ordinary, we went through our regular security checks and nothing came up on her ID, figured it was a fine match. So she went through the process of adopting, staff saw no red flags. I kick myself now, if i'd been around her with Val we could have stopped this, but i'd been too busy with other jobs to oversee that particular case.
She leaves with the pokemon, and we're none the wiser, but anyone who knows us, knows we do home visits after adoption to make sure a pokemon is happy and well. usually 3 within the year. Some of our staff turn up to an abandoned building, no pokemon, no people, nothing. The hunt began, Grey was quick to try to see if the pokemons ID had been pinged at any pokecentres, but nothing came up. We kept looking, and called in some favours at the local ranger bases and police stations to watch.
Eventually someone spots the woman in question, two regions over in Hoenn, selling eggs. She got pulled over for trafic violations while driving and got flagged. I went over personally to see what was going on, and turns out she was illegally breeding rare species to sell for huge money. The treeko was in BAD condition by this point, we took it back along with two dozen or so eggs, another Sceptile, and a pair of shroomish with unsual patterns that were on their last legs. She was taken to court for cruelty charges and served time.
The pokemon however were fine in the end, took some time to rehabilitate them, but they still hang around the island, that experience was traumatic for them so they choose to stay with us for saftey sake. We have no issues with this, and have since tightened our security checks. The womans trainer ID was a fake, a really convincing one, we messed up. It's cases like that that'll push us to all do better however, we learned a lot, and hold onto those failures to push forward in a better way.
Just glad the pokemon survived and are now healthy and happy.
