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When her family went on trips, we would house-sit and spend days with their beautiful golden retriever — my sisters and I swam in the pool with Cooper until mami dragged us out.

Recently, my adult daughter agreed to house-sit for friends in Culver City.

She was 23 and living in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she had just been sabotaged out of her first post-college corporate job by a racist boss, when she drove both the car and the boyfriend she'd had since high school across the country to Orange County, California, to house-sit for his grandparents.

Her solution was to agree to house-sit, walk dogs, and care for plants for people around the globe.

Mr. DePape would help her with her chickens and occasionally house-sit for her, she said.