The first time that Pauley Perrette excused herself from the room during our interview, she said, “The best thing to do is sit her on my chair. As long as you don’t stand up while I am gone, you’ll be fine.” She was talking about her Chihuahua, Cece. I had been warned. When we were arranging a time and place to talk, she told me that she would be bringing her two dogs along. “One of them bites,” she said. “I just wanted to let you know.”
    Thankfully, Pauley is passionate about rescuing Chihuahuas, not Rottweilers. When she excused herself from the room, she looked in my direction and gently whispered in Cece’s ear, “Friend, friend.” While she was gone from the room, I even found myself sheepishly repeating the refrain. I survived. At one point later on, Cece even sat next to me on the couch. After three and a half hours, I was on Cece’s VIP list. Well, that may be a stretch, but at least there were no flesh wounds.
    Pauley goes everywhere with her dogs. Our time together was spent in a bungalow at the Chateau Marmont, the Sunset Strip hideaway in Hollywood where Jim Morrison lived temporarily and John Belushi died tragically.
    Despite her Goth-babe character on the mega-hit NCIS, Pauley is not attracted to a place like this because of morbid Hollywood lore. No, she digs it because the bungalows are dog-friendly—complete with little doggie snack bags for the canine visitors.
    She’s red-hot passionate about animal rescue. Several years ago, she read a story about a puppy-breeding ranch that was abusing dogs. When the authorities moved in, it was suggested that the dogs be euthanized. Animal rescuers tried to find good homes for the abused pups. Pauley got on the organization’s website and read about their efforts, and ended up having a dream about a white-faced dog named Joker. That next weekend, she was volunteering for the cause.
The aforementioned Cece is a rescued dog. It explains her skittishness around strangers, and it goes a long way in explaining the compassion of Pauley Perrette.
    In real life, Pauley is every bit as engaging, inquisitive, and tattoo-and-mascara attractive as her character Abby Sciuto onNCIS. I never told her this, but I watch the show just to see her banter with Mark Harmon, work her techno crime-solving mojo, and pace around with her lab coat and school girl miniskirt. I am probably not the only one. CBS bags more than 17 million viewers every Tuesday with NCIS—a certifiable top-l0 show.
    She didn’t start off in show business. Her journey in front of the camera began when she dropped out of grad school while pursuing a degree in criminology. She fled to New York city and found herself wearing a sandwich board on roller skates in the Diamond District of Manhattan passing out fliers and bartending at night. When she heard she could make good money making commercials, she went for it to pay the rent. Since that time, she has appeared on Frasier, The Drew Carey Show and CSI: before finding a niche at NCIS. When she is not filming for TV, she works on independent film projects.
    Goth purists may be disappointed that she was not bedecked with fetish boots, black lipstick or skulls and crossbones. Instead, she was kicking back in old jeans, a white tank and tennis shoes. She is far more a very cool grad student than my generation’s Elvira. Truth be told, she’s a party girl with a brain. Her mind grapples with the big questions of life at a frenetic pace, producing both theories and uncertainties about life. In the midst of the swirling notions, she still has faith that one day she will understand the pain and joy of humanity’s existence.

RISEN Magazine: Do you ever feel like you are the pinup girl for science nerds?
Pauley Perrette: Abby is.

RM: Yes, Abby is. Are crime-fighting techies—the forensic experts—the new superheroes?
PP: Maybe in real life. No actor should be considered a superhero. But the people that we portray—I could tell you about a real person who trained me—those people really are making a difference by solving crimes. When I was taking forensics in school, no one even knew what that word meant.

RM: You went to grad school for criminology. What was the attraction?
PP: I always say, “I have a theory on that.” I have a theory on crime and it goes a little something like this. I don’t know what we are doing here. It’s a weird planet. It’s all f—ked up. But things happen to all of us that suck—like cancer and AIDS and awful things and car accidents and all this crap that no one planned for and nobody wants. And no one is immune from it. I cannot understand why someone, on purpose, would rob your house and steal your stuff or rape your daughter. We are all just trying to survive on planet earth. I don’t understand it. Maybe there is a humanity thing there that is a missing link. Don’t you understand about how tough this life is already? It is hard.
    There are fleeting moments of joy and happiness and fun. They are hard to come by, and they are so awesome. A lot of the rest of the stuff that we have to go through sucks. So someone makes a decision—on purpose—to steal somebody’s wallet. Why would you f—k it up even more? It is hard enough. That’s kind of what it was about. It’s not crime, it’s just people being awful to each other.

RM: Are crime-solving television shows a reflection of an innate sense of justice that we want to see things corrected, or is that something that is tutored in us?
PP: I don’t know. I think it is completely different. I have a theory on this. I think that it is just the mystery. Because there are not a lot of mysteries for us to figure out. People don’t usually sit around and try to figure out mysteries. Sure, some try to figure out how they build those little ships in the glass bo