Agency officials dispute that they ever knew about Andy, though their own records suggest otherwise.
In July 2007, Game and Fish ordered Kristy to export Joey from Arizona within 30 days.
Jamie Peachey
Joey likes to spend time in his cage at his residence in Surprise.
Jamie Peachey
Joey recently celebrated his third birthday at a backyard pool.
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She didn't.
Then, last December 10, agency officers raided the Pruett residence in Surprise, where Joey had been living for about six months.
During the execution of that search warrant, the team of agents found Joey in his "enclosure," a 12-by-10-by-8 bolted-down chain-link cage that encompasses much of what once was a garage.
It's where Joey spends several hours a day hurling around on the exercise apparatus.
But the authorities didn't seize Joey that day, apparently because they had no place to put him.
Instead, they placed him on something akin to "house arrest" (sans the electronic ankle bracelet), a status on which he remains to this day.
Joey's in limbo until a U.S. District Court judge in Phoenix sorts it all out.
Kristy and Andrew aren't to take the chimp off their property except in case of a medical emergency. They say they have obeyed that admonition.
Kristy Pruett has had Type 1 diabetes since she was 8 years old.
It is a debilitating illness that includes potentially fatal bouts of prolonged hypoglycemia, or low-blood sugar.
Byproducts often include deteriorating eyesight (even blindness), kidney damage, and nerve damage, says Daniel Walton, a Phoenix doctor board-certified in the diagnosis and treatment of kidney diseases.
Kristy injects herself with insulin up to seven times daily and has to be hyper-vigilant about what she eats, how much she moves around, about exactly how she feels.
But she says she often becomes faint and disoriented without warning.
"People with Type 1 definitely have a tough row to hoe," Dr. Walton says, speaking generally. "They truly have to walk a fine line all the time to maintain themselves."
But the state of Arizona doesn't buy that Kristy Pruett is disabled or, even if she is, that Joey is trained to do anything to help her.
"The ADA requires only reasonable accommodation," agency regional manager Ron Lucas wrote to her in the July 2007 letter that rejected Kristy's request to keep Joey as her service animal.
"Your request . . . is not reasonable in light of the risk to public health, safety and welfare, and given no evidence that you cannot monitor your blood sugar levels absent the aid of a chimpanzee."
Lucas added, "You have provided insufficient evidence to show that juvenile diabetes meets the definition of, quote, disability, close quote, under the ADA."
Game and Fish officials involved in Kristy's case have said in court proceedings that they think only of seeing-eye dogs as service animals, not non-human primates.
But the definition of "service animal" has expanded in the past decade to include birds, pigs, horses, monkeys, and other creatures. (A fellow from St. Louis claimed a few years ago that his parrot helped narrow his mood swings, and that it should be allowed to ride on the city bus with him. He lost).
More tangibly, the Boston non-profit Helping Hands has placed more than 130 capuchin monkeys in the homes of severely disabled people since 1979.
The capuchins — better known as organ-grinder monkeys — are trained over a period of up to two years to fetch food, change DVDs, pull books off shelves, and to provide companionship for people unable to complete such tasks.
Joey's service skill is this:
Kristy and others have trained the chimp to race to her refrigerator on command to fetch her Gatorade or other sugar-laden substances when she's at home alone and suffers a hypoglycemic attack brought on by her diabetes.
By way of demonstration, Kristy sits on the staircase that leads to the second floor of her home, about 25 feet from the fridge and out of the line of sight.
"Mommy sick! Mommy sick! Get me sugar!" she screams.
Joey quickly moves around the bend into the kitchen. He opens the refrigerator door and grabs a ziplock bag from a shelf, and rushes back to Kristy.
The chimp unzips the bag and hands her a small plastic bottle of lemon Gatorade.
He turns his back to her, and she pats him as a gesture of thanks.
Though it's admittedly a show, Kristy says the fact that Joey can do this — "He never ever fails," she says — proves his value to her as a service animal.
Kristy says Andy, her late macaque, could detect shifts in her body chemistry while sleeping beside her, which he did until his death.
"My scent would change, and he would wake me or Andrew up, or would just go to the refrigerator and get me sugar," she says. "The state of Arizona may not want to believe it, but it's true. Both of my primates were and are capable of saving my life."
Kristy says Joey isn't nearly as keen yet on the scent thing as the late Andy was.
"But who knows what will happen?" she says. "He has a lot of learning to go if given the opportunity."
However, Kristy concedes her chimp inevitably will get too big and strong to live with her safely.