This lawyer-turned-wrangler helped save 200 horses from a wildfire
Ami Cullen used her experiences from a 2020 wildfire to write a novel. (Photo by Jamie Lee Photography)
In 2012, Ami Cullen left her job as a litigation associate with a Washington, D.C.-area law firm to become a horse wrangler on a Colorado dude ranch. Trading her heels for cowboy boots was easy. But adapting her East Coast hunter-jumper equestrian experience to working on a ranch way out West was pure culture shock.
If this sounds like the plot of a page-turning novel, just wait—there’s also a deadly wildfire.
Cullen was working as the director of operations at the C Lazy U Ranch when the East Troublesome fire broke out in October 2020. It would eventually become the second-largest wildfire in Colorado history, killing two people, destroying more than 550 homes and buildings, and scorching nearly 200,000 acres. When Cullen got the call that the fire was heading her way, she and her team had to figure out how to evacuate the ranch’s 200 horses to safety—something they had never done before. Despite multiple challenges along the way, they saved the entire herd. The novel she wrote based on the harrowing experience, Running Free, was published in August.
How did you make the decision to change careers? Was there a big “aha!” moment?
No, it was more organic. I graduated from law school in 2004, and by 2006, I felt like I was at this weird limbo point in my life. That’s when my best friend, with whom I had showed horses growing up, invited me to go on vacation with her to the C Lazy U Ranch. That was really transformative. It was just a weeklong girls vacation riding horses in the mountains, but we made it an annual trip every summer.
Around my eighth year of practicing, I slowly started the process of looking into waiving into the Colorado bar. I realized it was going to take longer than I thought, so I decided to take a break from my current firm in Maryland and just go to Colorado and play wrangler for six months.
I did keep my big toe in law—the partner I worked for was wonderful, and she sent me depositions to summarize and motions to write. I was still thinking that after this stint as a wrangler, I would go back to full-time practice. I just never did. Then the ranch offered me a job.
I was still fearful of giving up all that education, and I still had student loans, but I thought, “I can always go back to being an attorney.” At the time, I was making $10 an hour, but it was probably the most fun I had ever had in my adult life while working. It was just so gratifying and rewarding. It was really difficult to imagine myself putting my heels and pencil skirts back on and being indoors all day.
Does your law career seem like it was another lifetime ago?
Sometimes. But I’m actually very grateful for my legal career because I do use what I learned—I write leases, and I buy and sell horses. I feel that having a law degree means I am taken a bit more seriously in those types of negotiations, a level of respect that can be helpful as a woman in a cowboy world. I’m not just some young girl that wanted to ride horses, I’ve actually lived another life as well.
Ami Cullen. (Molly Johnson Photography)Let’s talk about the fire. When did you realize your ranch was in danger?
That summer of 2020, it seemed like the whole state of Colorado was burning. Wildfires were always on the news, but they were always far away. When the East Troublesome fire started, it was close the ranch, but it was small and it seemed like it was going to be contained. It was producing a lot of smoke, but I just never really thought of it as a real threat until we got the pre-evacuation notice.
I’d gone into the historic barn to go through old files to find a fire evacuation plan, but they’d never had to evacuate the horses before. The only plan was to cut the fence, flood the meadows and let them run toward the reservoir. I was like, “Yeah, that’s some weird old cowboy thing.” You can’t just set 200 horses running around the county.
So we got on social media and made phone calls to find a pasture that was outside the evacuation zone and recruited help from county residents to trailer the horses there. I remember thinking, “This is insane that I am in charge of this massive horse rescue.”
Actually two rescues, right?
Yes—we had to move the horses a second time about a week later when our rescue pasture went into mandatory evacuation. That’s when it got really scary, because the fire had already burned down some of the homes and facilities on our ranch. This time, we didn’t have the luxury of having people in the county just five or 10 miles down the road to help us because they were busy moving their own horses. We ended up reaching out to the entire equine community of Colorado to help us.
I know that second rescue was pretty dramatic.
Yes! During that second evacuation, there were moments where I thought we were going to have to call it and just cut the fence and hope for the best. The winds were so intense, and you could see the flames coming in the distance.
I didn’t want to evacuate the horses to another part of the county, because the fire was not under control. I decided to take them to a ranch on the other side of the mountain, so we had to trailer all 200 horses again and take them over a mountain pass. Because Colorado has crazy weather, the trailers hit an ice storm on the other side of the pass, and the trailers were sliding and some of them jackknifed.
But we did it, and we got the entire herd to safety.
What an incredibly stressful but also inspirational experience.
Being a part of this kind of emotional experience was actually what prompted me to write about what happened. This was also 2020. There was the pandemic, we were going into the November election, and everybody seemed to not like anybody else. The number of people who came together to help 200 random dude ranch horses was unbelievable.
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It sounds like a movie!
It’s funny you say that because after all the horses were safe and things had quieted down, I started writing down everything that happened. That evolved into my first draft. It was probably 80 pages of just factual information that honestly read like a legal brief. There was no creativity. But there were times while it was happening that I remember thinking, “This is insane, like I am living in a movie,” so I really felt a pull to write it down.
Tell me about your decision to turn this nonfiction account into a novel.
I really wanted to make it more interesting. I’d never written creatively before, and I wanted to make it more fun to read. I also wanted to expand the narrative beyond the fire.
I have a lot of young girls who work for me, and also there are a lot of young girls in general who ride horses, and I wanted to reach them. I wanted to reach anyone who felt they had to live according to a checklist: I must go to college, I must get married, I must have kids, I must do this for my career. I know this struggle personally, and I know others struggle because some of these young women end up spending a couple of years working at the ranch with me.
I wanted to put my personal journey into writing as well because I wish I had known that what I am doing now existed as a career possibility. I didn’t know, and I didn’t have anyone around me that could have helped guide me to that.
If you love horses, you can do more than just show horses. If you get a law degree, you don’t just have to become or stay an attorney. I wanted to be able to tie that into the book, and it turned out to be much easier to do that with a character; that way, I could embellish and indulge in certain areas to make it more fun to read.
Will there be a sequel?
No, I don’t have any plans to write another book. But I would like to turn my book into a screenplay.
Have you thought about who you’d want to play you in the movie?
I feel like a Jennifer Garner type would be good, somebody who’s obviously mid-40s and relatable. I don’t know if she rides horses, but she’s who I picture being able to transition from an East Coast lawyer into a cowgirl.
This story was originally published in the February-March 2025 issue of the ABA Journal under the headline: “Trial by Fire: This lawyer-turned-wrangler helped save 200 horses from a wildfire and wrote a book about it.”
Related podcast:
The Modern Law Library: Horse-loving lawyer left the law to help run a Colorado ranch
Jenny B. Davis is a journalism professor at Southern Methodist University, a fashion stylist and former practicing attorney. Her most recent book is Style Wise, a guide for aspiring fashion stylists.
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