All zoo people will, at some point, say: “I love animals.”

This is true for Sean Greene, an all-around zoo man who for the last 18 months has run Mill Mountain Zoo, a 55-year-old institution that has not always been easy to love.

He started in March 2006. The zoo was in debt and a visitor left in tears at the sight of rundown exhibits. That year, a Japanese macaque escaped and a well-loved tiger died. But most of all, the mountaintop attraction suffered the impression — underlined by a subpar accreditation review that summer — that it was too small and dilapidated.

So the zoo director shakes the hands of supporters and goes before Roanoke City Council, paints cages and makes sure there are enough stuffed snow leopards in the gift shop. For the past 18 months, the story of a zoo in transition has been Greene’s story, too.

Man vs. zebu

Greene is 36, sandy-haired and often seen wearing the khaki-colored clothing of someone on a safari. One recent afternoon, he circulated among parents and small children during a zoo members event.

Member No. 1: “It looks a lot cleaner than I remember.”

Member No. 2: “That deck over there is new.”

Member No. 3: “Roanoke should rally behind it like The Grandin Theatre” — the landmark movie house that rebounded from financial trouble in 2002.

“We got an incredible product up here, just the packaging is poor,” Greene says sometimes.

Since he arrived on Mill Mountain, there have been visible changes (animals in new exhibits, ornamental bamboo in the right places) and less visible ones (the zoo is churning up more money and civic support). “The zoo’s at a point now where I can go out and ask for money and feel good about it,” he said.

The afternoon of the member party, patrons ate ice cream, kids had their faces painted and a zebu, an exotic cow in the zoo’s (revamped) barnyard, began knocking a trough against the (new) fence. To preserve a small piece of the zoo he has been rebuilding, the zoo director vaulted into the yard.

“I thought we’d have some human-animal communication,” Greene, a former all-state wrestler, recalled afterward. “I’d say, 'Move on.’” He distracted the zebu, but perhaps too well. The animal went into a “mock charge.” Greene vaulted back out.

“Sometimes my youthful exuberance gets the best of me when I should stick to sending e-mails,” he said. “But I do love animals.”

'You’ve got Sean’

Greene was 8 or so when he got a full tour of the Columbus Zoo from the director — a college buddy of his dad’s — Jack Hanna. It was his first zoo moment.

At 20, he was a student at Ohio State University and returned to the Columbus Zoo for a summer job, learning to handle animals. His arms bear several scars, “mistakes” he made rearing bear and tiger cubs.

“He’s started from the bottom,” Hanna said of Sean Greene in a phone call from Montana, then made a bottom reference of another kind. Hanna compared Mill Mountain Zoo to the Columbus Zoo of the late ’70s, just needing someone to preach the zoo and drum up community involvement.

“Now you’ve got Sean,” he said.

During his Columbus years, Hanna took Greene on more than a dozen of his regular appearances on “The Late Show” with David Letterman. Last March, the celebrity animal handler visited Roanoke for a sold-out fundraiser that brought about $250,000 to Mill Mountain Zoo.

In 1996, Greene joined the Fort Worth Zoo in Texas, where he directed its outreach and worked in education. He proposed to his wife, Tracy (“an animal lover but not to the level I am”), in front of the white tiger exhibit.

Now it’s Mill Mountain Zoo, which several times Greene has called the greatest challenge of his life.

The July after he settled in Roanoke, Oops, a Japanese macaque, slipped out of her enclosure. A weeklong search ensued, sometimes with night-vision goggles, before the monkey turned up near Garden City.

“That whole week was surreal,” he said.

Five months later, in December, the zoo’s iconic tiger, Ruby, was euthanized. She was believed to be about 19 years old and in poor health.

Building support

The director’s chair means Greene has to appreciate more than animals. “Instead of going to a zoo and looking at a gorilla exhibit ... I’m looking at the types of fences they use,” he said. “That’s what’s important, the little things.”

Working at smaller zoos means more involvement with the entire operation, explained Dave Orndorff, the new curator, who came to Mill Mountain from the San Diego Zoo. Greene certainly has a revolving list of duties — picking up cigarette butts or renovating the takin’s lair — but a chief role has been zoo spokesman.

On Aug. 20, he appeared before Roanoke City Council. He wore a dark suit, but the news was good.

Earlier in the day, the council had voted “aye” to transfer $166,000, the first installment of a $500,000 matching grant. That evening, the council extended the lease for the zoo’s mountaintop tract. Greene thanked the council.

“There’s obviously work being done,” Councilman Dave Trinkle said later. Trinkle, another zoo man (he served on its board for years), wants to see a real attraction on the mountain, not just patch-ups.

“The zoo’s in a fantastic location. It’s a great way to bring people off the parkway and into the valley,” he said.

After a handful of supporters addressed the council, 9-year-old Paddy Cotter took the podium. Standing on an upturned wastebasket he established his credentials (he has attended five zoo camps) and asked the council to “Please help Sean Greene make this the greatest zoo in America!”

It was a feel-good day for people who care about Mill Mountain Zoo. Later that week, Greene switched his Fort Worth cellphone number to the regional 540 — a token gesture that says he’ll stay in town.

Looking forward

Next weekend , the Association of Zoos and Aquariums will announce if the zoo has passed its 5-year review for accreditation, a gold-star approval for any zoo.

The commission denied passing Mill Mountain Zoo after last summer’s check-up, and gave it a year to make necessary improvements. Some notable renovations: a new playground, the zebu’s rebuilt barnyard and construction on a quarantine center.

Maintaining the AZA’s stamp, which Mill Mountain Zoo first received in 1995, would be an endorsement of the zoo’s efforts. “But the zoo will not close if we don’t ... it just means we work harder for next year,” Orndorff said.

Greene keeps a map in his office, a master plan for the mountaintop zoo of the future, where animals native to Virginia roam and where prairie dogs triumphantly return to an interactive exhibit.

“We’ve been playing catch up-for years,” Greene said. “Now we can look long term.”