{"id":8218,"date":"2025-02-19T10:30:14","date_gmt":"2025-02-19T18:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chiccompass.com\/?p=8218"},"modified":"2026-08-30T20:17:57","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T03:17:57","slug":"for-the-love-of-horses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chiccompass.com\/wordpress\/for-the-love-of-horses\/","title":{"rendered":"For the Love of Horses"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Chic<\/span><\/div>
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This article was printed in<\/em>
\nChic Compass Magazine - Issue 21<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>

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\"Moneda\"<\/span><\/div><\/div>

Moneda at the HAV Horse Rescue<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>

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For the Love of Horses<\/h1>\n

Horse Rescue CEO Alice Whitfield on a Love Story 53 Years in the Making<\/p>\n

BY STACEY GUALANDI \/ PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF HAV HORSE RESCUE<\/p>\n<\/div>

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It\u2019s feeding time at the HAV Horse Rescue barn in Las Vegas, but that doesn\u2019t keep CEO Alice Whitfield from singing to her stable.<\/p>\n

She bursts out her rendition of \"Side by Side\" as Casper, a 17-year-old Quarter Horse and retired barrel racer, continues inhaling a handful of hay.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have my repertoire, and I sing to all of them,\u201d says Whitfield. \u201cBut when it comes to food, I take second place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Always quick with a quip, this feisty five-foot (15 hands in horse lingo) force of nature\u2014with her signature lime-colored hair\u2014never puts her cart before the horse.<\/p>\n

But don't let her small size fool you. This former Broadway singer and actress is a thoroughbred in saving and rehoming surrendered horses.<\/p>\n

\u201cLilac was bones when she came here and wouldn\u2019t go near anybody,\u201d says Whitfield as she introduces her hungry herd one by one. \u201cShe\u2019s now up to weight and somebody is sponsoring to adopt her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJoe was a racehorse who had kissing spine disease that had to be operated on,\u201d adds Whitfield. \u201cInstead of being put down, we took him in. Now he's absolutely perfect and being ridden.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, there's little orphan Annie, the horse who inspired this 15-acre 501(c)(3) nonprofit in Kyle Canyon.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\"Ginger\"<\/span><\/div><\/div>

Ginger<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>

\u201cShe was just 333 pounds,\u201d says Whitfield. \u201cNow she\u2019s up to 1,000 pounds and a spoiled brat! Ha!\u201d<\/p>\n

With support from volunteers, generous donors and an expert team in place, HAV Horse Rescue has built a horse\u2019s dream house in just two short years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the Ritz Carlton of horse rescues,\u201d says part-time volunteer Ellen LaPenna, who heard about HAV Horse Rescue on the local news. \u201cI bonded with Willy. He's my love. Now I\u2019m his financial sponsor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI just pray that people do get the word and that it'll become self-supporting,\u201d says Whitfield of her charity. \u201cWe have turned horses and people\u2019s lives around for the better.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>

\"Sundance\"<\/span><\/div><\/div>

Sundance<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>

The \"we\" is she and her partner-in-equine, husband David Hammer. He was instrumental in making his horse-worshipping wife's bucket list wish a reality.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to take in horses that need to be surrendered due to a family crisis, financial difficulties, an inability to care for a horse and the need for medical intervention,\u201d says Hammer.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor horses that aren't adoptable, they get to live out their time in our sanctuary with all the love, attention and medical care they could ever want.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c[Horses] will come right up and sniff you and they'll find out if you're naughty or nice,\u201d adds Whitfield. \u201cYou don't pick them. They pick you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Decades ago, this devoted duo picked each other as teens growing up in Brooklyn, New York.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were sweethearts in ninth grade until our senior year in high school,\u201d gushes Whitfield. \u201cI was in love and that was it. There was nobody else for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Whitfield says Hammer\u2019s \u201cDaddy dearest\u201d put pressure on his son to go to college, not to go steady, so her beloved boyfriend broke it off.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a dutiful son and left me with a bag of Chinese food on Ocean Avenue in Brooklyn. Not that I remember it. It was a Sunday,\u201d jokes Whitfield. \u201cI never got over it. It killed me. I never stopped crying.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hammer says they did meet up in Brooklyn once more a short time later.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was going into the train station to go to school and she informed me that she was getting married,\u201d says Hammer. \u201cThat put a kind of a finality to the whole thing, so we just went off to what became our own incredible lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whitfield earned two doctorates\u2014one in English and the other in primate animal behavior\u2014both of which went unused in favor of the Great White Way.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\"Annie<\/span><\/div><\/div>

Annie at the HAV Horse Rescue. Photo by S\u014dlus1 Photography Group<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>

In a twist of fate, she was asked to be one of the original cast members of the acclaimed 1968 Off-Broadway show \"Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.\"<\/p>\n

Her \u201cperfect pitch\" and versatile vocals earned her fame in both New York and Chicago, and an invitation to perform her one-woman show at Carnegie Hall.<\/p>\n

But Whitfield says she soured on show business.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I decided to leave the business, my father was ready to kill me,\u201d says Whitfield. \u201cHe said, \u2018How could you do this to me?\u2019 He liked having a daughter who was famous. I was pretty famous and successful, but gosh, did I hate show business!\u201d<\/p>\n

Her streak of success continued as a New York City ad agency director\/writer\/producer, which led to coaching and casting voice actors. She worked with and befriended such legends as Dick Van Dyke, Tony Randall, William H. Macy, Nathan Lane and Mary Tyler Moore, to name but a few.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\"A<\/span><\/div><\/div>

A resident of the HAV Horse Rescue barn in North Las Vegas<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>

Whitfield opened her own company, Real-To-Reel Recording, Inc., which became one of Manhattan's top creative production houses, and was recognized as one of the top voiceover coaches in the country, all while raising her son Mitchell.<\/p>\n

(Fun fact: Mitchell Whitfield followed in his mom\u2019s famous footsteps with memorable roles like Stan in \u201cMy Cousin Vinny\u201d and Rachel\u2019s ex-fiance Barry the orthodontist in \u201cFriends!\u201d)<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Hammer, a widower with two children, had moved to Taiwan and became a hugely successful international businessman.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe spent 38 years building an empire, never being able to speak a word of Taiwanese; a word of Chinese; a word of anything other than English and a couple of Jewish phrases here and there,\u201d jokes Whitfield. \u201cBut he turned nothing into a 1.2 million-square-foot furniture factory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Throughout the years, Whitfield admits she never stopped thinking of\u2014and trying to locate\u2014her long-lost love. Promising leads, even one from a private detective, always led to dead ends.<\/p>\n

The story of her decades-long search is a complicated one, but in 2013, Alice Whitfield (n\u00e9e Berman) finally got an email address for Hammer through the help of old high school friends. She contacted him immediately.<\/p>\n

\u201cI looked at this email and said to myself, \u2018Do I remember Alice Berman?\u2019\u201d recalls Hammer. \u201cAre you fucking kidding me?\u201d<\/p>\n

From then on, they emailed each other every day, which Hammer says, \u201cmushroomed into over a hundred email trails, back and forth and back and forth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThen came that one special email,\u201d adds Whitfield, who was by now living in Las Vegas and teaching voiceover classes at UNLV.<\/p>\n

Hammer invited her to meet him in Hawaii for a Midwood High School reunion\u2026for two.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, there I was on the way to Oahu, sitting in the aisle seat near the bathroom because all I could do was run and pee,\u201d laughs Whitfield. \u201cA woman next to me asked, \u2018Are you all right?\u2019 No, I'm not. I'm meeting the love of my life, who I haven't seen in 53 years!\u201d<\/p>\n

That first face-to-face is a moment they will never forget.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe didn't do anything; he just stood there,\u201d says Whitfield. \u201cThen he said, \u2018Alice Berman?\u2019 I said, \u2018Yes, David Hammer.\u2019 Then, all of a sudden, he grabbed me and kissed me, and that was that.\u201d
\nSince then, they haven\u2019t stopped making up for lost time, which includes a family of three goats, two horses, two dogs and 38 rescued horses, at last count.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\"Alice<\/span><\/div><\/div>

Alice Whitfield and David Hammer<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>

\u201cThe number keeps on changing,\u201d jokes Hammer.<\/p>\n

Many adoptable horses at HAV Horse Rescue have healed and found forever homes, and dozens of families have written letters raving about how perfectly matched they are to their new horses.<\/p>\n

The bottom line is that Whitfield credits its success so far to a talented team led by ranch managers and COO Sharon and Tommy McGarry, trainer Erica Manke and a large group of volunteers.<\/p>\n

Once the veterinarians properly care for a surrendered horse\u2019s medical issues, Sharon determines which ones are ready for rehoming. But before any horse is released, she visits the potential new owners\u2019 home and facility to make sure it is suitable.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an opportunity of a lifetime for me,\u201d says McGarry while holding back tears. \"HAV Horse Rescue has a serious purpose and has really been put together to last and to get it right. It's all a gift; it\u2019s good for the horses, and once people come, they want to be part of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

That includes one veteran named Orlando. Whitfield says he would lock himself in his house and never talk to anyone until he started coming to the HAV Horse Rescue.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe comes up and just takes care of the horses, plays with them and he's a new person. He leaves his house!\u201d says Whitfield. \u201cThat\u2019s the power that these animals have. Grace, to me, is the connection between a human being and, let's face it, an animal.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>

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Right now, everyone is chomping at the bit for Phase Two to be completed. Whitfield says\u2014for the first time in Las Vegas\u2014there will be a state-of-the-art equine rehabilitation center at HAV Horse Rescue!<\/p>\n

\u201cNo more hauling your horses to another state,\u201d says Whitfield. \u201cWe\u2019re building already. We don\u2019t waste time.\u201d<\/p>\n

After five decades apart, not wasting time makes perfect sense. That is, horse sense.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not a religious person, but there's no doubt in my mind that there's some fate involved here, some extraterrestrial thing out there that put us back together again,\u201d says Hammer. \u201cOf course, it would not have happened had Alice not pursued it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd he's been making it up to me ever since,\u201d adds Whitfield. \u201cWe have Chinese food once a week. Ha!\u201d<\/p>\n

To learn more about how to help and get involved, visit www.havhorserescue.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

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It\u2019s feeding time at the HAV Horse Rescue barn in Las Vegas, but that doesn\u2019t keep CEO Alice Whitfield from singing to her stable. She bursts out her rendition of \"Side by Side\" as Casper, a 17-year-old Quarter Horse and retired barrel racer, continues inhaling a handful of hay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8219,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4522,4262],"tags":[4279,3158,4278,3419,3128],"class_list":["post-8218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-issue-21","tag-alice-whitfield","tag-charity","tag-horses","tag-nonprofit","tag-stacey-gualandi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chiccompass.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chiccompass.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chiccompass.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chiccompass.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chiccompass.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8218"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/chiccompass.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8229,"href":"https:\/\/chiccompass.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8218\/revisions\/8229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chiccompass.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chiccompass.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chiccompass.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chiccompass.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}