In 1979, Leo Grillo, an up-and-coming young Hollywood actor driving to a location shoot, spotted a bedraggled abandoned dog wandering under the broiling desert sun.

Leo couldn’t resist stopping to pick up the animal and subsequently nursing it back to health. This experience opened Leo’s eyes to a shocking problem: annually, millions of pets are tossed out and simply left to die in America’s wilderness.

Almost before he realizes it, Leo has found and taken in 35 more abandoned dogs, saving them from certain death. Leo formed a nonprofit organization called D.E.L.T.A. Rescue (Dedication and Everlasting Love to Animals), which eventually grows to include a 115-acre ‘super sanctuary’ housing over 1500 abandoned dogs and cats, the largest organization of its type in the world.

A controversial figure, Leo Grillo in The Rescuer becomes obsessed with the tracking of one specific dog and her family over a 2-year period which changes his life in an unexpected way.