Matt Perella was staring at a tattered wall in a roach-infested motel, trying to salvage his life. The former Marine grew a sprawling business in New York City, throwing lavish parties for celebrities like Jimmy Buffett, Calvin Klein, and Martha Stewart. But the COVID pandemic took everything from him, leaving Mr. Perella with nothing. His beloved city was barren. He was homeless, penniless, and in a mountain of debt.
For the second time since losing it all in 2020, Mr. Perella looked across the room and saw his gun. He was stuck in a “rabbit hole” with no way out, he said. But when he tried to get up to grab his firearm, his rescue dog Raffe jumped on him, pinning Mr. Perella to the floor. Raffe did this the first time when Mr. Perella wanted to kill himself, and now Raffe was doing it again.
“My dog physically saved my life twice from me eating a bullet,” Mr. Perella said.
“That’s what really put me in check like, ‘All right, I’m here for a reason. There’s something else. It’s not my time.’”
But Raffe was simply doing for Mr. Perella what Mr. Perella had done for Raffe.
When the pandemic brought Mr. Perella’s life to a screeching halt, the former world traveler decided to get a dog after avoiding pets for much of his life. He saw Raffe, an Alaskan malamute and Aussie shepherd mix, on Pet Finder. It was love at first sight.
“Look at this dog!” Mr. Perella said to himself, starting at his computer screen. “He is so majestic and beautiful. His eyes just like grab you when you look at him.”
Little did Mr. Perella know Raffe was on death row for dogs. He was first at a “no-kill” shelter for several years and logged over 40 bites across several victims. But Mr. Perella saw a different side of Raffe with the only two trainers that calmed the dog. Mr. Perella was confident that with the right amount of determination, repetition, and love, he could save Raffe’s life.
After only a few months, Raffe’s transformation was undeniable. He loved every person he met and would roll on the ground for belly rubs from children in Matt’s community. Matt was spending all his time at a farm in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts, boarding his horse, Buck, learning to ride and giving himself and Raffe therapy from the pandemic-stricken, concrete jungle of New York City.
Mr. Perella had an epiphany. At last, he found peace with his dog and horse—nothing made Mr. Perella happier than exploring nature on horseback with Raffe walking beside them. He decided to ride Buck across the United States and break the record for the fastest solo horse ride from one ocean to the other. He would also raise awareness for Veterans like himself suffering from PTSD so he could eventually open his dream project, The Righteous Life Rescue Ranch—a place for horse and dog rehabilitation and a retreat for anyone suffering from mental health.
A Fateful Meeting
According to Jim Lowder, the store manager who would make the social media post after giving Mr. Perella a bed to sleep in that night, it was destiny.“If Isaac hadn’t killed the battery, none of this happens,” Mr. Lowder said.
During this second cross-country trip, Mr. Perella realized he needed drivers to follow him and Buck and provide roadside support. His homemade camper is built onto the back of his pickup truck, giving him a place to sleep every night when the whole crew stops at campgrounds after nightfall.
Isaac Baird started driving for Mr. Perella after meeting him in Texas. Mr. Baird accidentally left the truck’s headlights on one night with the engine off, killing the battery. Mr. Perella needed a bag of feed for Buck, and there was only one store in the area carrying it—a Tractor Supply in Sumter. Since the truck was stuck on the side of the road, Mr. Perella was forced to ride Buck to the store to get the feed before closing at 9 p.m.
Mr. Perella reached the store at 8:45 p.m. and noticed no poles he could tie Buck to outside. There was also no one outside who could watch Buck for Mr. Perella.
“I’m like, ‘Well, I’m just taking him in.’ I just walked Buck right into the store,” Mr. Perella said.
“And that’s how crazy I am sometimes. And, you know, Buck is just incredible. Like nothing fazes him. He just walked in, and he’s like, ‘Oh, so this is what the inside of the store looks like.’”
Maci Aytes was behind the checkout counter that night when she saw the massive silhouette of a man on a horse through the store’s sliding glass doors. When Mr. Perella and Buck trotted into the store, Ms. Aytes ran past her boss and asked if she could pet Buck. She had wanted a horse since she was a little girl and was immediately enamored by Buck and his calm demeanor.
Mr. Lowder, at first, had his back turned to the doors.
“And I turned around and saw Buck, the horse, and I was like, ‘Woah! There’s a horse in here!’” Mr. Lowder said.
Instead of their usual closing routine, the pair were instantly glued to Mr. Perella and his horse. Everyone went outside, and Mr. Perella told his story. He talked about losing his business at the start of the pandemic, his struggles with PTSD, depression, and suicide, and his mission to open The Righteous Life Rescue Ranch to help other Veterans like himself with canine and equine therapy.
Mr. Lowder was moved by Mr. Perella’s story.
“I’ve been there. I’ve battled depression, too. I’ve done it. Hearing his story was very close to me,” Mr. Lowder said.
“And I have so much respect for the men and women of the armed forces. And the veterans and what they’re willing to go do. I told Matt, and I said they’re willing to go out there and die for people they’ve never met and come home, and it’s almost like we abandoned them. They’re battling PTSD, and we’re like, ‘Hey, thanks, bye!’”
The story resonated with Ms. Aytes as well.
“He took a chance to let go of everything and was like, you know what—something’s gotta give, and he wasn’t afraid. And I’m glad he did because it probably saved his life,” she said.
At first, everyone went their separate ways. But Mr. Perella had a thought minutes after the encounter. He realized Tractor Supply’s security cameras likely captured him and Buck strolling inside.
He called the store to see if Mr. Lowder could give him the security video. Mr. Lowder took out his phone and recorded the footage from the CCTV screen in the back. He sent it to Mr. Perella minutes later, but something else was on Mr. Lowder’s mind.
“And when I locked the doors before I even got in my truck, God told me and said, ‘Offer him a place to stay.’ And the weight just hit me,” Mr. Lowder said.
He pushed the voice out of his head and told himself he would wait and ask his wife, Amber Lowder, when he got home. But the message was relentless, and the words “Offer him a place to stay” replayed in his mind like a feedback loop.
“I just got overburdened by it; I couldn’t take it. It was the only thing I could hear, ‘Offer him a place to stay.’ And so I just sent him a text right there. It wouldn’t stop, and God would not stop until I sent him the text,” he said.
When Mr. Perella received the text message, he was thrilled. He usually spends a chunk of his evening scouring Google Earth for suitable campgrounds where he stops for the night. Mr. Lowder offered dinner, a shower, and warm beds for Mr. Perella, Mr. Baird, and Raffe.
Even though Ms. Lowder did not find out she would be hosting guests that evening until after her husband had extended the invitation, she was ecstatic. She welcomed the three travelers into her home, and the group ate dinner and talked for hours on the Lowders’ back porch that overlooks an 80-acre pond.
The next day, Mr. Perella left early to eat breakfast, with another kind soul assisting him during his journey. But the Lowders were moved by the experience and could not get Mr. Perella’s story out of their heads.
They decided to write his story down so they could look at it again in the future and never forget.
But then the Lowders realized they could help Mr. Perella even more. Mr. Lowder posted on his Facebook page discussing Mr. Perella’s story and the previous fateful meeting in Tractor Supply. The Lowders linked to Mr. Perella’s GoFundMe page, website, and Instagram account. When a friend of the Lowders told them to make the post public, they could not imagine what would happen.
Mr. Lowder said he had never received more than 200 likes on his most popular Facebook posts. In a matter of days, over 12,500 people shared the post and it was seen by over 2.46 million. The Lowders were stunned, but Mr. Perella was in disbelief.
He went from 5,000 to 15,000 Instagram followers in only two days. His GoFundMe page raised an additional $1,000, and he was getting hundreds of messages from people all over the United States who wanted to help him and his life goal of opening The Righteous Life Rescue Ranch.
Molded by the Marines
Growing up in East Longmeadow, Mr. Perella struggled in high school. He jokes that some of his teachers flubbed his grades to keep him on the hockey team because of his impressive athletic skills, which secured him a scholarship at Salve Regina University in Rhode Island.But after witnessing his brother’s metamorphosis following a return from boot camp, Mr. Perella sought out the same structure and discipline.
He enlisted two days after his 18th birthday and soon learned he was smarter and more skilled than he assumed. After floundering in high school, Mr. Perella scored above 95 percent on all of his Marine tests.
During his four years in the Marines from 1999 to 2003, Mr. Perella spent half of the time working security at Kings Bay, Georgia, and the other half at Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, California. He was trained on rocket launchers at Camp Pendleton and even led his SWAT team to victory in a competition among 150,000 other Marines.
His initial plan was to transfer to the Army to fly helicopters, the only program in the armed forces where service members can become pilots without first going to college.
When Mr. Perella learned his then-wife was pregnant with their second daughter, he left the armed forces and built a house in East Longmeadow for himself and his family.
Moving to the Big City
Mr. Perella entered a modeling show in Boston where 50 different talent agencies from around the country were scouting. The five agencies interested in Mr. Perella were all from New York City, inspiring a move to the Big Apple instead of Hollywood.Mr. Perella modeled and acted in several independent films and theater plays. But his big break came from a different industry—event planning. He worked with a man who threw parties for some of the richest people in New York City, but the manager was mean and disliked by his employees and clients alike, according to Mr. Perella.
Mr. Perella seized the opportunity when several of his biggest customers agreed to follow Mr. Perella if he went out on his own and started an independent company. In 2009, Perella Events was born. Beyond Mr. Buffett, Mr. Klein, and Ms. Stewart, Mr. Perella also threw parties for the record mogul David Geffen and Dolly Parton’s former manager, Sandy Gallin. Mr. Gallin gave Mr. Perella unlimited budgets to throw the most decadent and awe-inspiring events.
The parties attracted celebrities like Alec Baldwin, Matthew Broderick, Sting, Bon Jovi, Paul McCartney, and Ellen DeGeneres. He provided chefs, flowers, lighting, DJs, and full staff to run these events, including the massive Pinknic music festival in New York.
But everything changed in 2020 when a virus from overseas reached the city and ravaged everything in sight. Businesses closed, the city instituted lockdowns, and private events and parties were canceled for the foreseeable future.
“It all happened at once in 2020, and I became really suicidal, and I just really did not want to live at all,” Mr. Perella said.
But even when the pandemic weaned in late 2021, and business opportunities suddenly opened to Mr. Perella again, he was a changed man.
“I just couldn’t go back to my business because it was part of the reason why I got in the rabbit hole. I got so heavily in financial debt because I had no money coming in at all. And I didn’t get any of those relief loans. I was dying.”
He asked one of his most committed DJs to take over Perella Events so he could spend time with his horse Buck and his dog Raffe. This move paid off, and now Perella Events is booming once again, he said.
Plans for a Brighter Future
He would take his horse and dog across the country to raise awareness for a retreat he plans to open in Asheville, North Carolina, called The Righteous Life Rescue Ranch. The trip took Mr. Perella, Buck, and Raffe nearly 3,000 miles across the United States through California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina.
Among the sights seen on the six-month journey, Mr. Perella was amazed by the mountains and wild Mustang horses in northern Arizona and New Mexico and hopes to one day train some of these horses at his future ranch.
If everything goes according to plan, Mr. Perella hopes to purchase a 300-acre property with river access, nature trails, and pasture land.
He will build a rodeo, cabins for guests, and facilities to house injured or aging horses for rehabilitation. Horses still in their prime will be used for trail rides and other equine therapy for Veterans and citizens alike. Horses past their prime will be retired and allowed to live the rest of their lives peacefully at the ranch.
All services will be free for Veterans, and other guests will be asked to leave donations. He also plans to build facilities to house and train death row dogs to give them another chance at life. Dogs that are successfully rehabilitated, like Raffe, will be given to suffering Veterans for free so they will have a companion to help them.
What is the cost of this wide-sweeping project? Mr. Perella estimates he will need $10 million to purchase the property and build all the required facilities. But despite the high price tag, Mr. Perella is confident he will raise the money required and purchase the property by the summer of 2024. He said he has God on his side.
“So I do have a strong feeling that it’s all gonna go down relatively fast because [God] made it clear that he wants this to happen, and the people are very clear that they want this to happen. So you know, I think there’s a big fish just hovering out there, watching the journey, just waiting for it to end to be like, ‘Here you go. Let’s get going.’”
While Mr. Perella has a modest timeline in his head for when he wants to realize his dream, the journey and the trials he faced have taught him patience.
“You know, ultimately, I have learned that there is my timeline. And then there’s God’s timeline,” Mr. Perella said.
“His timeline wins every time.”
