Grace is a beautiful strong buckskin mare. She was captured with her stallion, Silver King, and the rest of their family herd in the Silver King roundup on October 3, 2010. Stampeded by deafening helicopters, Grace, pregnant, was chased relentlessly over difficult terrain.

After the helicopter assault, Grace and her family were forced into a trap at the capture site, where they were held in a pressure-cooker situation with other bands in the same small enclosure. After hours waiting in the small holding corral at the trap site, Silver King and his mares’ heart-wrenching screams rose above the panic of their capture as they were separated and said goodbye through the metal bars of the holding pen.

In a testament to the value of the work done by knowledgeable humane observers during roundups, as well as local volunteers who get to know their herds on the range, fellow wild horse advocate Laura Leigh tracked Silver King to a prison training program. In March 2017, with the help of our supporters, Return to Freedom was subsequently able to reunite the family band and the horses were released onto Return to Freedom’s 2,000-acre satellite sanctuary in San Luis Obispo County.

The white stallion, Silver King, and three of his mares took a little encouragement to leave the small meadow in which they’d been getting acclimated to their new environment and waiting out rainstorms and muddy conditions. Lead mare Grace pointed the way. The trio of mares paused, waiting on their stallion as he took up his position behind his harem, before trotting up through hillside oaks and onto waiting fields of green grass that stretched out in every direction.