On the 21st of June, 2025, we lost a woman who dedicated her life to helping and rescuing animals. Mikayla Raines was the founder and face of SaveAFox Rescue. Her death by suicide sparked sadness and outcry on the internet.
Mikayla was born in 1996 in Minnesota, USA. She first became interested in saving foxes when she was 15 years old and saved and rehabilitated a young grey fox. This is what would spark her love and passion for saving these beautiful animals. When she was 19 years old, she rescued her first fox from a fur farm, and that wouldn’t be the first time.
When she was 20 years old in 2017, she founded SaveAFox Rescue and got registered charity status. This would be the program she would use to rescue and rehabilitate multiple foxes over her time and would be the foundation that would take off a few years later.
I found her YouTube channel around the same time the world did. In December 2021, videos started to go viral. I didn’t take notice until later in 2022, when her foxes, Esme, Mala, Finnegan, and Dixie, went viral, and I was hooked. Watching Finnegan especially is what drew me in, and it was great to watch her form these bonds with the animals she rescued.
Mikayla often rescued her foxes from fur farms to save them from being killed. A controversial decision came into play when it was revealed she would buy the foxes to save them, a fact that a few people criticised her for.
Another criticism was her taking in more foxes than she could care for. I understand these opinions, but she was just trying to rescue as many foxes as she could. Evidence of how pure and how much love she had.
Fellow rescuers had started to give negative feedback on her and the foundation. Something that Mikayla took to heart. She was open about being on the autism spectrum and suffered from depression.
When her husband, Ethan Frankamp, released the video to the SaveAFox social media, I can’t explain how it felt. My heart dropped, and I couldn’t help but feel for him and their daughter, who was born in 2022. When he revealed the online bullying she had gone through, which led her to take her own life, it was a punch to the gut.
Through hate, this world lost a pure soul. Be kind.
R.I.P Mikayla Raines
There is nothing to understand in buying the foxes from the horrific fur farms. That’s what it took to get these people to surrender them to her and save their lives.