In the 1960s, a teenage Patti Hall was told women couldn't be veterinarians, so she majored in art. But she never gave up on her dream of caring for animals, and in 1997 she was hired as the director of the Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo.

It was supposed to be temporary.

“They needed a director and hired me to run the zoo for the summer,” she says. “They wanted me to shut the zoo down and find homes for the animals. Sixteen years later, we had a show on Animal Planet, and we are about to build a green zoo from the ground up.”

Big dreams

Although Patti couldn't be a veterinarian, she didn't let that stop her from being around animals her entire life.

“No matter where I lived, I volunteered at zoos,” she says. “I did a lot of picking up paper and licking envelopes and sometimes wasn't able to be with animals that much, but just getting to be around it was a high for me.”

When Patti and her husband moved to the Gulf Coast in the mid-90s after retiring from careers in publishing, she started volunteering at the Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo 30 to 40 hours a week, which turned into a job — where she has worked at least 60 hours a week for the past 16 years.

“Zoo keeping is like teaching — it's more of a labor of love than it is a financial career,” she says. “It's not a 9 to 5 job; It's a 5 to 9 job.”

But Patti wouldn't want to do anything else — interacting with animals every day, as well as guests from all over the country, is the realization of a dream for Patti. Because the Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo is so small, it is able to provide guests with one-on-one experiences with animals, and that's exactly what Patti believes zoos should be doing.

“I always wanted to create a zoo that I wanted to go to as a kid that didn't exist,” she says. “If you allow people to interact with animals and they can connect, and they end up walking around with a little more respect for animals than they did, we've done our job. We've entertained you, educated you and hopefully made you look at the animal world with a different view.”

The Little Zoo that Could

When Hurricane Ivan hit Baldwin County in 2004, Patti, her staff and volunteers evacuated 280 animals to her home in Elberta, where she had 10 acres of land. She also housed some of the zoo's staff and their pets.

“We found out later we were the only zoo in recorded American history that has ever staged a full evacuation,” she says.

The heartwarming story of the Little Zoo that Could inspired a show by the same name on Animal Planet, interviews with news anchors across the country and donations — the community rallied behind the zoo, and it has been improving ever since.

“This zoo is here because of the community,” Patti says. “We are so lucky to have a zoo in such a small area.”

Now, the zoo, which is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that relies on donations, grants and admissions for funding, is trying to raise money to build the world's first environmentally sustainable zoo on 50 acres of land a few miles north of its current location.

The Amazing Green Zoo will also be almost entirely hurricane proof, Patti says.

“But we're running around a year behind in our fundraising because of the economy,” Patti says. “We're waiting on a couple of big grants. We're still working hard — it will be built. I say we're on a five-year plan. I'm getting older, so in five years, I just want to be riding around our new zoo in a little golf cart and talking to our guests.”

The new zoo will cost about $25 million, and Patti says in addition to grants, serious fundraising efforts will begin early this fall.