Person Page - 410

     Kaitlyn Mifsud was born.

     (?) Damanti married Joanne Mary Muscat, daughter of Joseph Frank Muscat and Angelina Theresa Azzopardi.

     Daniel Charles Deguara M.A. was born on 22 January 1974 in Santa Clara Co., CA, USA. He married Cheryl Anne Lanzo.
     Daniel Charles Deguara M.A. was educated between 1992 and 2002 Santa Clara University, Master's Degree, Educational Administration and Supervision,2000 - 2002
Santa Clara University, Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Liberal Studies,1992 - 1996
Santa Clara University, Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Psychology, 1992 - 1996. He was living in 1995 in Cupertino, CA, USA. He was a Evergreen School District, 16 yrs:
Assistant Superintendent Jul 2014 - Jun 2020 · 6 yrsrs San Jose
Director, Educational Services Jul 2011 - Jun 2015 · 4 yrs
Principal Jul 2004 - Jul 2011 · 7 yrs 1 mo between 2004 and 2020. He was a Superintendent at Belmont-Redwood Shores School District in July 2020 at Belmont, CA, USA. He was living in 2022 in San Jose, CA, USA.

     Matthew John Deguara was born on 2 November 1982 in Santa Clara Co., CA, USA. He married Maria E Parsons.
     Matthew John Deguara was living in 2024 in Sunnyvale, CA, USA.

     Cheryl Anne Lanzo was born circa 1968. She married Daniel Charles Deguara M.A., son of Charles L. Deguara and Louise M Cunha.
     Her married name was Deguara.

     Charles L. Deguara was born on 15 May 1949 in San Francisco, CA, USA. He married Louise M Cunha, daughter of (?) Cunha, on 22 April 1972 at Santa Clara Co., CA, USA.
     Charles L. Deguara was listed in the 1940 US Census of Paul Anthony Deguara and Pauline Abela in 1950 at San Francisco, CA, USA; age 27, wholseale steel co. machinist helper. Charles L. Deguara was educated at Los Gatos High School. He was living in 2022 in Cupertino, CA, USA. Charles L. Deguara was also known as Charles D. Deguara.

     Carmelo Schembri married Angela Bonello.

     Angela Bonello married Carmelo Schembri.
     Her married name was Schembri.

     Mary (?) married John Muscat.
     Her married name was Muscat.

     Jack Pisani was born in 1910 in Italy.
     He emigrated from Malta in 1923.

Jack Pisani was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 29 August 1965: NEW publisher in town: A series of novelty books, chiefly comic, appeal’s from Pisani Press, San Francisco. This is a division of the Pisani Printing Company, the
Brannan street firm founded in the 1920s by the late Jack Pisahi, Italian-born opera buff and long a member of the San Francisco Opera chorus. Mr. Pisani’s son, Richard, and a nephew, Michael Pisahi, operate the business now and are responsible for branching out, gingerly for the moment, into this publishing experiment.
Pliciiii Louks ax e .cliieily softeover. or spiral-bound novelties. Bill Bates’ “Ping,” a collection of appealing car- - toons featuring the San Francisco Chinatown figure of that name, is a current success....

     Helena M Harvard was born circa 1953.
     Her married name was Pisani.

     Debra Chisholm was born.

     Richard Chisholm was born.

     (?) Vaznaugh married Beatrisa Muscat, daughter of Emanuel John Muscat and Carmen B Chetcuti.

     Joshua Vaznaugh was born.

     Kelsey Vaznaugh was born. She married (?) Flynn.
     Her married name was Flynn.

     (?) Flynn married Kelsey Vaznaugh, daughter of (?) Vaznaugh and Beatrisa Muscat.

     Kyler Vaznaugh was born. She married (?) Wilson.
     Her married name was Wilson.

     (?) Wilson married Kyler Vaznaugh, daughter of (?) Vaznaugh and Beatrisa Muscat.

     Emmanuel Sammut was born circa 1947 in Malta. He married Ligia A. Gutierrez on 30 January 1974 at San Francisco, CA, USA. Emmanuel Sammut died on 5 December 2000 at Daly City, CA, USA.
      Obituary: on 7 December 2000: SAMMUT. Emmanuel — In Daly City. December 5, 2000 at 53 years of aqe. Dearly beloved husband of Llgla Sammut; loving father of Llgla; dearest brother of Joe Summit. A natlveof Malta; a loyal employee of Dependable Furniture Manufacturing for 31 years.

     Ligia A. Gutierrez was born in November 1949. She married Emmanuel Sammut on 30 January 1974 at San Francisco, CA, USA.
     Her married name was Sammut. Ligia A. Gutierrez was living in 2022 in Millbrae, CA, USA.

     Ligia Sammut was born.

     (?) Brandt married Philomena Grace Sammut, daughter of Joseph J Sammut and Carmela Gatt.

     Sarah (?) married Kenneth Paul Sammut, son of Joseph Paul Simon Sammut and Janet Ruth Clement.
     Her married name was Sammut.

     Raphael Xerri married Rosoria Pearson.

     Rosoria Pearson married Raphael Xerri.
     Her married name was Xerri.

     Margie M Campobasso was born circa 1961. She married John J Xuereb, son of Charles Xuereb and Margaret Schembri.
     Her married name was Xuereb.

     Charles James Sammut was born in May 1961 in Dearborn, MI, USA. He married (?) Vezina. Charles James Sammut married Lisa (?) in 2015. Biography Charlie Sammut and his Vision Quest Ranch     

1961 Born -Dearborn, Michigan. I have a sister a year older and an identical twin brother. We lived in Michigan until 1965 at which time we moved to Redwood City, California where my Dad worked for Western Gear Company as a machinist. Dad worked double and triple shifts while Mom worked as a secretary to save enough money to one day open a motel in Salinas, California. In 1972, we moved to Salinas, California and built the Laurel Inn Motel & Restaurant which opened a year later.It was as "family run" as a business could be for we did it all !!! Office, laundry, maintenance, it was at that time I learned what it takes to create and maintain a new business - the Sammut technique - which is a bit tough at times but has never failed us.                
     1978 Graduated from Palma High School - Salinas, California. Although I always had a need to have and be around animals, my Dad didn't always share this enthusiasm. It was my Mom who caved into it occasionally and it was she I must have received the anthropomorphic gene which often plaques me when dealing with my animals and the film industry in general. Our love for animals was, is and will no doubt always remain beyond our control. It was at this time I moved out on my own which enabled me to begin an extensive and varied menagerie of pets. All were of a legal pet store nature, but exotic and unusual none the less. (Boas, pythons, sharks, parrots, alligators, as well as dogs, cats, rats, & horses)
1979 - 1980 Enrolled at Hartnell College - Salinas, California where I attended the Animal Health Technology Program with the intent of pursuing a career in Veterinary Medicine. During this time, I also worked full time at the Toro Park Veterinary Clinic.
     1981 - 1985 In short, Mom & Dad's dreams skyrocketed. Their 54 unit Laurel Inn would eventually become 146 rooms with my sister Terry there to run it. To date, for two European immigrants from the Mediterranean island of Malta, Mom and Dad are the two most successful people I have ever known. They define the words self made and successful. They taught me how to prove "there is nothing I cant do or have if I want it bad enough"! My Brother George went on to run my dads second dream, the Forest Park Inn in Gilroy, California where George also bought into a restaurant franchise, The Black Bear Diner. As expected, George's success was no different than the rest of us and often calls upon my bear, "Brandi" for publicity stunts... Dad soon became a major developer in town having developed many restaurants, and even a shopping center and more important, allowing Mom to stop working.
And then, there's me. For reasons I still don't fully understand, I decided to become a police officer. (I guess school life or the business world was just a little too boring...) I attended the Gavilan College West Coast Police Academy under the uniform of the Monterey County Sheriffs Department. Upon Graduation, I remained a deputy with M.C.S.O. for one year before transferring to the Seaside Police Department, a much more active department.
1985 - 1986 I bought Oxton Kennels, a dog and cat boarding facility as both an investment and a hobby. My intentions were for to run the kennel while I remained in police work. It was toward the end of this period that I adopted "Sam", an elderly cougar I found being held illegally in a garage in Seaside. The owners didn't want the animal any longer and I was able to obtain permits to adopt him. This was when a "hobby" started getting way out of hand...The kennel business increased to a point that made going to work for someone else every day unbearable. I resigned as a police officer to help run the kennel and start an educational program called "Wild Things"with my exotic pets .
     1986 - 1988 I was blessed with a son and a daughter (the human kind) from a previous marriage. I would have never guessed that there could be anything that could give me more to worry about or to be proud of than my animals - I was wrong.
My infatuation with Sam led to an attempt to acquire an even larger cat. I ordered a tiger through an animal broker I had met along the way (it was legal to do such stupid things back then) but when the cub arrived, it was a lion. Opting to keep the lion, the tiger arrived six months later...
1988 - Present As lion led to tiger, tiger led to bears, bears to monkeys, monkeys to elephants... Eventually, that tiger tried to eat me but the lion, Josef, became my best friend, my star, and the single most important influence on my life that would change the course of my life forever. Impressed by his beauty and special temperament, a trainer in the film industry asked if I would allow Josef to participate in a Dryfus Fund commercial to be filmed at the Grand Canyon, Arizona. I was getting paid to play with my best friend in a warm sunny place. Josef was having a great time. All this excitement coupled with the financial reward was enough to lure anyone into the industry, as it did me. "Wild Things" became "Wild Things Animal Rentals Inc."
Today, My little hobby has evolved into something I could have never imagined when it started. In 1994, we left our 5 acre rented property in North Salinas to move to the largest investment I have ever made, the beautiful 51 acre Vision Quest Ranch located in the sun belt between Monterey and Salinas.
On July 7th, 2008, Josef passed away and I was faced with continuing without him. On that day I promised him that I would build our animal family a much better home that they and I could one day retire.
Unfortunately (and very unexpectedly), the film industry all but fled California to find much less expensive states and countries to accomplish their filming. This forced me to once again evolve if I was to support my animals and keep my promise to Josef.
It was at that time I began exploring and eventually moving towards the zoo industry, a decision that would benefit all concerned, myself, my animals as well as a community that was very much in need of an alternative activity for their families. In 2011, we achieved our non-profit status and Wild Things Animal Rental Inc. was no longer. We were now formally, Monterey Zoological Society.
     Fundraising began, as did construction for I litterally do as most of the physical work myself so that the majority of the funds raised can go towards materials. The goal is to transform what was "Wild Things A.R.Inc." into a formal zoo as quickly as possible. Funding the exhibits and necessary property modifications is our greatest challenge today but we're doing our best to move forward. Today, the first of three phases is complete as we just opened our new OZ exhibit, housing our Lions, Tigers, and Bears...
     December of 2015 brought yet another gift into my life when I married my wife Lisa who is without a doubt the one person who holds my life, my hopes, my dreams and my sanity in her hands. Together, I have no doubt we will finish this thing and keep that promise I made to a very special friend and lion one day.
     In January of 2020, the zoo was completely finished but our grand-opening was unfortunately delayed due to COVID19, California Fires, and more however we survived those tragic times and even got accredited by the Zoological Assoc of America (ZAA) for our efforts. Today Monterey Zoo is open and continues to evolve and provide many a zoological experience and education in conservation they might otherwise never receive.
     
400 River Road Salinas, CA 93908 (831) 455-1901 Fax (831) 455-1902
     call us at (800) 228-7382.
     
     Charles James Sammut immigrated in 1965 to Redwood City, CA, USA. He was a Police Officer until 1986 at Seaside, CA, USA. He was a Developed a wild animal training facility (Wild Things A. R. Inc.) which trains animal for the film, television and education industries.

Charles James Sammut was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 6 August 1995: Where the Wild Things Are -- Salinas company has biggest manes in showbiz
ByJohn Rjnn, Examiner

SALINAS — When Lowenbrau's ad agency needed a male lion for a commercial it was filming in Kenya, it searched all of East Africa without finding the perfect beast.
Instead it put out a call for Josef, a 525-pound African lion who makes his home in
Salinas, behind the International House of Pancakes. Probably the most photographed lion in the world, Josef has sauntered insouciantly down Wall Street as the corporate symbol of Dreyfus Corp. and posed regally for Disney animators drawing “The Lion King” For the last three years his throaty roar has opened every MGM film. Josef is the undisputed star and major breadwinner of Wild Things, a menagerie of exotic show-biz animals improbably located amid suburban sprawl nearly 300 miles north of Hollywood.
The business has managed to carve out a niche for itself in the highly competitive
world of supplying animals for movies, television shows, print ads and magazine covers.
But anyone expecting to ride a lion’s tail to riches should look elsewhere, said owner
[See ANIMALS, B-3]
Charlie Sammut: “You can make a living doing this, but I wouldn't want my kids to do It,“ he said. "It's a lough way to earn a buck. It’s the animals that keep me doing it”
A former Seaside police officer, Sammut is one of about 60 people running such a business in California, and one of only about 10 with a large stock of exotic animals. Under Sommut’s roof are 112 animals — everything from a hooded cobra to an elusive snow leopard, a dromedary camel to a black panther. Costly diets -- To make ends meet, Sammut also runs a dog kennel and a horse boarding facility. While the business may not make him rich, it’s done well enough to allow him to begin moving his operation to a 51-acre spread on the western edge of the Salinas Valley.
Insurance, food and veterinarian costs are high, and then there are the specialists: Puff, a 70- pound monitor lizard with back trouble, gets regular visits from a chiropractor.
“I have no idea how much I spend on food, and I don’t really want to know,” Sammut said. He did allow, though, that he spends $300 a month on chicken and nutritional supplements for just one cougar. Nick Toth, current president of the California Animal Owners Association, estimates it costa him $300,000 a year to run a similarly sized compound near Palmdale. Half that total, he said, is food. "Nobody has ever made a lot of money in this business," Toth said. "The overhead kills you.”
A lion or tiger might command thousands of dollars a day, he said, but the phone can go months without ringing. As Sammut showed visitors around his compound recently, he carried a female baboon on his back. The baboon immediately began grooming the back of Sammut’s head, searching for lice and straightening his hair. “That’s just being a baboon,” Sammut said. “We’ll sit and watch TV together, and she’ll do that all night”
Scars are an occupational hazard — “You work with bears, you’re going to get bit. My alligator bit me once, too. No big deal.”
Only once has Sammut had an animal seriously turn on him. The attack came while he was visiting a compound of a fellow animal trainer in Northern California. Unbeknownst to Sammut, a jaguar had escaped its cage. “I walked through the gate and the jaguar jumped me right away,” he said. “It broke my hip. I was out three months.”
Sammut, 34, got into the animal business 12 years ago by an unusual route: While making a drug bust as a Seaside cop, he stumbled upon a cougar in the suspect’s garage. Sammut and the mountain lion got along so well that the alleged drug dealer gave it to him as a pet
Three years later, having become fascinated by big cats, Sammut decided he wanted a pet tiger. After obtaining the necessary permits from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Department of the Interior, state Fish and Game, state Department of Food and Agriculture and a handful of city and county agencies, Sammut contacted the West Coast Game Park,
an animal facility in Bandon, Ore. They didn’t have any tigers for sale. Would he be interested in a lion cub for $800? He hesitated, but the game park eventually talked him into it. “It turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me,” Sammut said.
The cub, Josef, grew into a beautiful specimen, with an impressively hill mane. And, like all great models, he had a face that was perfectly proportioned and unblemished. Most male lions, said Sammut, have scarred faces from fighting or rubbing their noses on cages.
Art directors and producers began calling, eager to book Josef for photo shoota. A. $2,000 to $6,000 a day, Josef was bringing in more money than Sanmut was making as a police officer. He quit to devote full time to managing his animals..
One of his smartiest jobs was a...brau's ad agency wanted to fly Josef to Kenya for a photo shoot. The agency couldn't find a lion in all of Africa that could be trusted not to eat the model it would be working with. Josef, though, proved to be domesticated; he walked right out to a herd of zebra without interferring — good news for the model but a disappointment for photographers who had hoped to see the king of beasts in action.
For "The lion King," Josef moved into the Disney studios for weeks at a time, posing for teams of illustrators. Ha even let Barry Sanders of the Detrot Lions hurdle over him for a Spots Illustrated Kids cover and has roaed for souvenier pictures with ewryone from James Bari Jones (his voice in "The Lion King”) to Sonny Bono.
To buy a lion today costs about $1,500, if you ... your permits and can find one for sale. Add to that about $6,000 for a cage, more for the cost of maintaining a regulated facility and even more for a vehicle to transport the beast. With food and vet bills, "it's well over a $100,000 investment in one cat,“ Semrnut aid.
Josef gets the lion’s share of the bookings, but some of his neighbors are begining to work regularly. A few stops away from Josefs cage lives Kolui, the current Bengal tiger and ...photo-shoot companion of male model Fabio. Another neigbor is Brandy, a
black bear who has starred in "Return to Grizzly Mountain“ and 1 Renault commercial.
Two of Sammut’s animals are blind: an old South American macaque living out his last years and Reebok, a kangaroo who appeared in an American Express ad despite his disability.
"Not all of his animals work." Sammut said. "But it's a moot point- I just like having them around, and they have a good life here.“
Not everyone agreesa. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animais, a nationwide animal rights organization is steadfastly against the use of animals for commercial entertainment purposes. While the organization has nothing specific to say about Sammut, it opposes the entire industry and has filed lawsuits to stop some acts on the grounds that the animals were abused. “We’re totally against the capture and confinement of exotic animals for amusement purposes, 'said managing director Ingrid Newkirk. “It's a ludicrous, uncivilised, old fashioned form of entertainmentt. Even the kindest owners are depriving those animala of something important,"
Sammut, who buys his animals from zoos and other captive breeders, has invited animal rights activists to tour his compound. He said his animals lead a good life.
“A lot of people feel that using animals for TV and movies is cruel, that you have to torture them to get them to perform." he said “But it's just not true, at least not here. “I see no difference betwees what I do and a dog breeder who keeps a kennel." Sammut said "The idea that the quality of llfe for a lion should be so much better than (that of) a dog, is beyond me. don’t feel my animals suffer at all.'

Charles James Sammut was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 20 April 2003: Safari in Salinas’ wild encounters is part of charm at Vision Quest inn
By Betsy Malloy, Salinas
The lion roars all night. TV sound pierces our tent's walls and reverberates across the surrounding fields. At dawn, sprinklers come to life, ⁴¹showering silvery arcs over the
Salinas Valley's budding salads. While cars crawl down the highway in the distance, their drivers unaware of the big cat’s existence, we sip coffee on the-' porch of an African safari-style tent at Vision Quest Bed and Breakfast, less than an hour's drive from Silicon Valley. A male ostrich just a hundred yards aw.* is dancing on his knees with wings spread wide and head waç ging sideways, doing his best to impress his unresponsive femah companion.
“Did you hear Josef roar last night?” asks trainer Christy Ingram, as she brings a basketful* ^v fresh pastries for breakfast. To ” our enthusiastic “Oh, yes,” she * responds, “Good, then he gets hr paycheck today.” Vision Quest’s sister compa ny, Wild Things Animal Rentals Inc is one of a half-dozen Califomia companies that train wild animals for film, television and ed*i cational work. Owner Charlie Sammut wanted to find a way for his menagerie to work without traveling, so he combined 20 vears of wild animal training...

Long article on p. C8.

Charles James Sammut was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 16 December 2007: It’s not so far from Salinas to the Serengeti
Wild Things is part B&B and part home to Hollywood’s biggest box-office beasts
By John Flinn
The noisy neighbors kept us up half the night — we could hear everything through the paper-thin walls — and in the morning room service seemed to take forever to deliver our breakfast. If this sounds like d complaint, it’s not. Our vociferous neighbors were the Lion King, the Exxon tiger and various other movie-star leopards, cheetahs, jaguars and cougars. And our breakfast eventually arrived at our front porch, courtesy of a jaunty African elephant named Butch. Wild Things, a 51-acre spread in the rolling hills south of Salinas, is part wild animal park, part safari-style bed-and-breakfast and part colony for some of the biggest box-office stars of the animal kingdom. It belongs to Charlie Sammut, a 46-vear-old former Seaside police officer whose hobby of collecting exotic animals as pets "got way, way, way out of hand.” "It started one day in 1985 when I arrested a guy who had a cougar in his backyard,” Sammut told me. "Before he went to jail he asked me if I’d take care of it, and back then you could legally do something that stupid. And it just sort of grew from there; It’s not an occupation for those who bruise like a peach. Over the years Summut has had his hip broken by a jaguar, his arm broken by a lion and his hand bitten by an alligator and a bear, fortunately not at the same time.
“You get to the point.” he said, “where you just go home, tape it up and go back to work.”
Just about every animal at Wild Things has a movie, TV commercial or magazine spread on his resume. The undisputed star is Josef, a 26-year-old African lion with a huge, luxurious black mane. The model used by Disney animators for the Lion King film, losef is also the Dreyfus lion and has appeared in a couple of Michael Jackson videos, the “Tarzan” and “Bom Krce” television series, the “George of the Jungle” film, “The Postman" and “Naked Gun" among others. In the animal world’s version of coals-to-Newcastle, he was once flown to Africa to shoot a Lowenbrau commercial. Unlike the local beasts, Josef could be counted upon not to eat his co-star. A few feet away lives Kolar, probably the most photographed tiger in history. He's appeared in Exxon ads and more calendars and magazine layouts than you can count. Not to destroy anyone’s illusions, but quite a few of the lion and tiger pictures you see in calendars and magazines were shot not in East Africa but in the wilds of the Salinas suburbs. Professional photographers have learned how to make the grassy hills and acacia-like oak trees stand in quite convincingly for the Serengcti Plain.
What do these animals eat? Sammutl says he goes through truckloads of Purina Elephant Chow — there really is such a thing — plus Purina Kangaroo Chow, Purina Monkey Chow and Purina Camel Chow..
Wild Things — a little confusingly. the bed-and-breakfast part of the business is called “Vision Quest" — is one of two places in northern California where you can bed down amid an African menagerie. The other, Safari West in Santa Rosa, is a much larger facility, with 11 tent-cabins. Many of its 400 animals roam freely on its 400 acres, and it’s kid-friendly. It has giraffes but no elephants, lions or tigers. Wild Things has just four widely spaced tent-cabins, but only four elephants, one zebra and a pair of ostriches are given room to roam. The lions, tigers and most of the 100 other animals spend most of their days in cages. Kids under 14 are not alowed, except in rare circumstances.
The spacious canvas tent-cabins were imported from Soirh Africa. where they’re used for high- end safaris. Ours — "The Paciderm Palace" — had a queen sized bed with a canopy of mosquito netting (purely decorative this time of year), a futon, a refrigerator and a bathroom with terrycloth robes and a walk-in shower. There was no phone — you communicate with the office by radio — but my cell phone got good reception.
All four tent-cabins ovedook a sunken. 5-acre enclosure where the four elephants - all retired circus performers — speid the day with the zebra and osriches. I never got tired of watching the elephants root around with their trunks for snacks hidden in the pen, toss dirt on their back, playfully butt heads and serialize with each other. Once, one of them gave a playful swat wth her trunk to the zebra... moved in too closely with the elephant was eating. The zebra spun around and unleashed a two-legged kick, fortunately catching nothing but air.
"They’re just playing." Sammut told me. The elephant could easily kill the zebra if she wanted to, but this is all in fun."
In the late afternoon Sammut came walking up the road to our tent-cabin with what I first thought to be a dog on a leash. It turned out to be a 2-year-old spotted hyena named Eddie, an orphan from Tanzania. A frisky, cuddly little guy. He almost certainly won't remain thisi way when he gets older. Next came Beauregard. a zebra, and then Dominic, a miniature Siicilian donkey with a distinctive cross of...shortly before he
was crucified, and when the shadow of the cross fell across the beast's track iti became a permanent feature of the breed. As each new' animal was presented I felt a little like Johnny Carson when Jack Hanna was the guest. But in no need of a big laugh from the audience, 1 refrained from having any of the animals poop on my head.
In our tent-cabin was a list of local restaurants that would deliver to our door, from a Marie Calendars to a Thai eatery. Instead. though, we dined on picnic supplies we bought on route. Nights are cold in Salinas this time of year, and wc had a little trouble staying comfortable. With the electric heater and electric mattress warmer switched on. wc kept bouncing back and forth between chilly and overheated. And — not tliat wc minded — our
...by the roars, growls and snarls coming from the big cats whose pens were 75 yards away.
Once in the night I awoke to the nearby grunt-groan of a lion, and for half a confused second I really thought I was back in the Serengrti. In the morning Butch delivered a basket full of muffins, croissants and fruit to our front porch, and the handlers passed us a bag full of apples, bananas and oranges. One by one. my wife Jeri held out pieces of fruit, which Butch gently hoovered into his trunk and then dropped into his mouth. Never before have I so enjoyed tipping for room service. He was a Owns Vision Quest Ranch, which has evolved today to include a 51 acre facility open to the public to view his animals, and a pet boarding facility (Oxton Kennels), the Vision Quest Equestrian Center, as well as the an African Elephant sanctuary (E.A.R.S.), and the property is home to a very unique Safari Bed & Breakfast. He and (?) Maltese Owned Businesses were Maltese Business Runs the Vision Quest Ranch and Monterey Zoo in Salinas. He started a dog kennel, and trained animals for film and TV work. The only Maltese American to run a Zoo.

Charles James Sammut was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 5 June 2016: Showbiz animals’ home becomes a zoo
Although the yellow brick road is still in the planning stage, staff at the recently renamed Monterey Zoo are already calling its spacious new animal enclosures “Oz."
That's because the lions, tigers and bears are the first round of animals in or moving soon to larger, more natural digs at the former Wild Things compound in the Salinas Valley. “Eventually we’ll have a yellow brick path going up to that area," said founder and animal trainer Charlie Sammut.
In August, the zoo’s four Bengal tigers — two males, two females — moved into a 12,000- square-foot playground with a . 25"foot swimming hole and a waterfall, and viewing windows for visitors. In Februar', the zoo finished nearly identical facilities for its three lions. In late May, the zoo broke ground on a new home for its two cinnamon black bears.
That in turn will allow for expanded quarters for the three camels.
.Sammut opened Wild Things in 1983, at the start of. his career handling show business animals. Along the way he acquired or rescued big cats, smaller cats, elephants, pri- iliâtes, and what lie lovingly calls “oddballs” — a hyena, capybara and aged kangaroo among them — that now total more than 180 creatures on his 51-acre Vision Quest ranch near the Gabilan Range. As filming in California moved to other locations, Sammut said, he wanted something better for his animals — and for families in the surrounding agricultural community, who have few educational leisure options. “It was amazing,” said Kaiya Torres, 9, after a recent tour. “I really like the lions and the tigers.” She was visiting with her family from Aspen, CO, and grandmother Lydia Torres of Salinas, who added, “It's so cool there. It’s beautiful.” —Jeanne Cooper.
He was living in 2022 in Salinas, CA, USA.

     (?) Vezina married Charles James Sammut, son of Anthony Sammut and Tina Borg.
     Her married name was (?) Sammut.

     Lisa (?) married Charles James Sammut, son of Anthony Sammut and Tina Borg, in 2015.
     As of 2015,her married name was Sammut.