Finding a future

As a teenager, Ida Angelina Lopez often rode her bay quarter horse, Lady, for miles across the Mesilla Valley, seeking solace and space to grieve. Two weeks before high school graduation, her father, Victor, was just 43 years old when he was killed by his own brother in a family feud. 

“I told Lady everything,” Lopez says. “If it wasn’t for my horses and our arena, Lopez Arena, I wouldn’t have made it.”

The tragedy fractured her once tight-knit family. Uncertain about the future, Lopez turned to her mother for guidance. 

“She told me I could do anything,” Lopez says, “so she encouraged me to enroll at New Mexico State University.”

She entered NMSU with one goal: earn a degree in animal husbandry to honor her family’s farming and ranching roots. But grief lingered. On the day of her final exam in agricultural economics, Lopez faced an impossible choice: attend her uncle’s court hearing or finish her test. She chose the hearing and turned in her exam blank but missed court by minutes.

“After that, it was hard to find the motivation to return,” she says.

Still, she found herself drawn back to campus, sitting quietly in agriculture classes, watching students care for goats and sheep. But the heartbreak was still too fresh. Instead, a family friend, Dottie Akers, encouraged her to apply for employment at White Sands Missile Range.

“I didn’t know much about the military,” Lopez says, “but I learned valuable skills on the job.” 

Akers gave her rides to work and helped her prepare. Lopez soon became a trusted colleague, especially enjoying time working at McAfee Army Hospital with military medical personnel at
White Sands.

She later supported veterans and military families at White Sands and Fort Bliss. 

“I learned how to channel my cares into caring for others,” Lopez says.

In her twenties, Lopez married, raised a family and bought her first home. She still visited the NMSU campus, often with her young son, Stephen. She’d point to the buildings and say, “You’ll take classes there someday.” Stephen Lopez ’01 ’06 later earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in communication studies from NMSU.

Through service, she began to heal. Her pain gave her deep empathy. 

“Those were the best years of my life,” she says.

Even as her career progressed, she missed the rhythm of farm life. Her family’s history in the Mesilla Valley dates to 1881, and that legacy continues to shape her generosity. Her parents had only third- and sixth-grade educations but passed down powerful lessons about hard work and stewardship. 

Today, Lopez is preserving her family’s Mesilla Valley history in a book while investing in its future. 

“Someone has to look after the next generation,” she says. “I just want these students to go out and do what I couldn’t.”

In 2016, she established an endowed scholarship in animal and range sciences, funded through her estate and named after her parents. 

“Don’t look at what I did,” she says. “Just make your effort to do good. I think my folks would be proud that what they worked to build is now in a small way helping young ag students.”

To explore your own legacy at NMSU, visit plannedgiving.nmsu.edu.