A real estate broker from Atherton came to the aid of Watsonville-based Equine Rescue Center & Sanctuary by offering to help the financially-strapped center relocate to San Benito County in Paicines.
“We were kind of lost,” said Monica Hardeman, the president and founder of the organization. “I didn’t know where we were going to go.”
In recent years, Hardeman’s organization was struggling to stay afloat due to high leasing costs in Watsonville, she said.
“I had no idea where I was going to send this circus to,” she said.
But a chance meeting in November prompted Craig Duling, a longtime real estate tycoon and philanthropist in Silicon Valley, to offer to help the equine center relocate to San Benito County in early February and start over.
“I like to help those who don’t have a voice for their own welfare,” Duling said. He called horses an “American icon,” and when he heard about the organization’s financial trouble, he stepped in.
“I wanted to help them in particular because it’s hard to find an organization where all the money goes back to the mission,” he said.
Searching throughout central California, Duling finally chose a 400-acre ranch in Paicines, which happened to be for sale. He bought the property for less than a million dollars and leased it to the center.
Hardeman said she had adopted 38 horses from horse auctions last year. Typically, older horses are sent to horse auctions to be sold to slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico, she said.
“For elderly horses, we’re kind of their last stop,” she said.
Currently, she owns 72 horses and says she might expand the number of horses she has sometime in the future.
“He (Duling) really cares about horses,” she said. “I could tell he was a true-blue horse lover.”
