Wake County Sheriff's Office Partners With Horses to Help Deputies Heal

After responding to a deadly assault near Fuquay Varina where deputies found a 12-year-old girl killed and a 9-year-old boy seriously hurt, Wake County Sheriff's Office personnel spent the following week among 13 horses at a nonprofit farm near Wendell. That visit put a new partnership to its first significant test.

The Wake County Sheriff's Office has teamed with Helping Horse, a health and wellness nonprofit near Wendell, to offer deputies free equine-assisted therapy and mindfulness sessions designed to help them process job-related trauma. The program opened to the agency this spring and is available off-duty, individually or with family members.

Jackie Shapaker, coordinator for Helping Horse's first responders and veterans program, described how sessions are structured. "We offer mindfulness and grounding techniques before they're with the horses and while they're with the horses," she said, adding that "deputies' jobs are highly stressful."

The contrast with a standard shift is stark, according to Deputy Sheriff Kevin Matthews. "In a normal 12-hour shift, you're going from call to call to call...sometimes you can't even eat...and, here, you're just unwinding in the beautiful county with a bunch of horses," Matthews said.

That psychological weight accumulates over an entire career in ways most people never encounter. Sergeant Mark Szajnberg put it in concrete terms: an average person sees two to three critical incidents in a lifetime, while a law enforcement officer sees more than 700 over the course of a career.

The partnership provides 8-hour individual programs composed of one- or two-hour sessions, as well as 6-hour family programs. Eligibility is assessed case by case. "It's based off the deputy or first responder that goes and their level of need is at that time," Szajnberg said.

Szajnberg described the program as new to the agency and said he hopes more deputies will treat Helping Horse as a sanctuary for healing as the spring season continues.