A 250-pound pig, who had been living with his owner in the back of a hatchback car in Portland, is now adjusting to rural life in Scio, Oregon.
On Wednesday afternoon — just days after members of Portland Fire & Rescue’s Community Health Assess and Treat (CHAT) team offered help — Roscoe arrived at Lighthouse Farm Sanctuary, located about an hour and a half south of Portland in Linn County.
CHAT members first reached out to Roscoe’s owner, Tony James, who had been living out of his car, on Monday.
Less than 24 hours later, Fire Bureau employees had found a home for Roscoe, and the city was setting up travel arrangements for James and his dog Elvis to reunite with James’ family in Chicago.
James, accompanied by Elvis, brought Roscoe to the sanctuary for a tearful goodbye.
“It was actually quite emotional because the bond between Tony and Roscoe was very apparent,” said Gwen Jakubisin, executive director of Lighthouse Farm Sanctuary. “They love each other very much. We were all crying.”
In June 2025, a run of bad luck left 44-year-old James without shelter in Portland after his appendix ruptured and left him unable to work his job as a sheet metal fabricator. A month later, his partner of 11 years died from a heart attack, leaving their dog Elvis, and their pet pig, Roscoe, without a home.
James and Elvis will soon be in Chicago, thanks to a city program that reunites people experiencing homelessness with their families. Meanwhile, Roscoe will remain in Oregon.
“He is doing well. It’s a big adjustment,” Jakubisin said of Roscoe. “He’s never met any other pigs before, Tony told us. So he’s meeting a few friends. He’s kind of overwhelmed with the new smells and the new sounds. I think he’s just decompressing.”
For now, Roscoe is being kept in his own enclosure during a quarantine and adjustment period. Several weeks from now, after he is neutered, he’ll be able to join the other 132 pigs who have full run of the sanctuary’s 54 acres.
“He’s going to have tons of space to roam,” Jakubisin said. “We have a big oak forest, and so in the fall he’ll have acorns to munch on. He’ll have wallows, which is something he had never really had before. Tony said that he found a mud puddle in a park once and went wild with it.”
Roscoe is a 3-year-old, fully-grown Göttingen pig. James said his late partner purchased him for about $20.
“The reason why people get them as pets is because they tend to be the smaller breed of pigs, but that’s all relative because 250 pounds is pretty big,” Jakubisin said.
Lighthouse Farm Sanctuary is the state’s largest rescue for farm animals. The nonprofit cares for more than 300 animals, including pigs, cows, horses, chickens, sheep and goats. Many of the animals arrive from neglect situations.
That was not the case with Roscoe, whom Jakubisin described as “healthy and happy.”
“There’s been so many situations where pigs come to us and they’re emaciated, they have overgrown hooves, overgrown tusks – things that could have easily happened to Roscoe given the situation,” she said. “It was totally the opposite. You could tell (Tony) did everything he could to make sure (Roscoe) was taken care of.”
Roscoe and the farm’s other pigs celebrated Thanksgiving with vegan pumpkin pies.
 “We’re just so thrilled that we were able to help, and we really hope this helps Tony get back on his feet,” Jakubisin said. “Roscoe is going to be super well taken care of, but if there’s ever a situation in the future where Tony can reunite with him, we will be more than happy to facilitate that.”
Samantha Swindler is a features reporter and videographer with The Oregonian and Here is Oregon. She joined The Oregonian in 2013 as editor of the weekly Forest Grove Leader suburban newspaper and has since… more
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