At Happy Valley Equestrian Center, outside downtown Suffolk on Whaleyville Boulevard, Shahla Mercer, Amy Ewing and Lisa Molloy are putting their backs into the reality of racehorse rescue.

Mercer, 18, and Ewing, 43, run their plans for repositioning a portable pen past Molloy, also 43.

Molloy approves, her Lincolnshire accent asserting itself in Southeast Virginia’s crisp autumn air. It quickly becomes clear the executive director of ReRun Inc. is in charge, and, Molloy getting on one end of a steel panel, that she leads from the front.

“New horses that are just retired, we always put them in a smaller area to start with,” Molloy explains.

Generally speaking, the retired thoroughbred racehorses that come to ReRun have known only the confined space of stalls. An open field is a concept worked up to gradually.

“The aim of it is to evaluate any injuries or behavioral issues, and then start getting them turned out in a small area and gradually into a regular-sized field,” Molloy says.

Sharing space with other horses is another area for acclimation.

Then the retraining begins. For example, Molloy says, an ex-racehorse might be comfortable walking into the large trailers that are commonplace in the industry, but not the small ones used by recreational horse people.

“You have to work with them,” she says. “You are teaching them a different outlook.”

One of 23 accredited organizations for retraining and adopting retired racehorses in America, ReRun currently has 22 horses at its leased Suffolk facility.

One of the newer arrivals, Radiohead, retired with an injured tendon. He started his career in England and was brought to the U.S. to run in the 2009 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.

“I think he’s won over $300,000,” Molloy says, adding that four horses she’s currently working with have combined winnings of more than $1.25 million.

In the past year at the Suffolk facility, 72 horses have been assisted, and homes have been found for 50, she says.

The organization has strict adoption guidelines. New owners cannot be children or beginners. These are thoroughbred racehorses, after all.

“We found out there’s a home for every horse. Some of the most difficult ones it takes a little time, but eventually we find one,” she says.

The task isn’t finished when a new home is found. Adopted horses are tracked for 12 months before ownership is transferred, and they can always be returned if circumstances change.

Commuting from Virginia Beach, Molloy spends 10 to 12 hours at the Suffolk farm, seven days a week, and rarely takes a day off.

When she gets home, she’s answering emails, making phone calls and marshaling the power of social media.

She gets help from a supportive board of directors and loyal volunteers like Mercer and Ewing — as well as the volunteers of Moneigh, a group that raises money for ReRun by auctioning paintings rendered by retired racehorses.

Like many other people who’ve made horses their life, Molloy was born around them. She is a native of the large seaport town of Grimsby — an industrial center for fishing and fish processing in England — where her grandfather and other relatives used to bet on the horses.

Both her parents worked in fish processing factories, while her grandfather was a fisherman.

“My grandmother would bike over to the docks to clean offices until she was 76,” Molloy said. “She lied about her age so they couldn’t make her retire.”

Though she clearly picked up her grandmother’s work ethic, Molloy knew from an early age that she wanted to leave the fishing industry for horses.

She started riding lessons when she was about 4, and after completing school, she worked with racehorses in the winter and polo ponies in the summer. One of her first polo jobs, Molloy says, was taking care of Genesis guitarist Mike Rutherford’s polo steeds, and she also rode some Arabian racehorses belonging to Roger Taylor of Queen.

Working on polo ponies brought Molloy to the U.S. in 1993, and she met her American husband in Colorado in 2003. His work brought them to Virginia, where ReRun Inc. thoroughbred adoption opened its Virginia center in 2012 on the grounds of a Suffolk farm that used to raise Standardbred horses for harness racing.

Her charges today require a special expertise to be made ready for a life outside the race track, and that’s a big part of the purpose of ReRun.

The vast majority of ReRun’s horses are “not rescues as such,” Molloy says. “A lot of them have had illustrious careers, and their owners want to provide them with a safe and happy retirement.

“Others were high-dollar youngsters that just weren’t going to perform on the track. The racing industry, and the owners and trainers, are pretty supportive.”

In the worst situations, she says, horse come from the private homes of people who watch “Secretariat,” think they need a racehorse, go out and buy one and then discover how ill-prepared they are.

“In the past 12 months we have taken three horses out of kill auctions,” Molloy says. “All had come via private owners. I also took two advertised for free on Facebook.”

After a bit of re-training, some special TLC and a careful search for the right new homes, their names can be added to the list of placements on a whiteboard that occupies a prominent wall in the ReRun office.

For the horses on that list, ReRun gave the gift of life.