Page 32 - NM Spring 2019

TEAM By Pete Herrera
Lisa Yanguez was born with a hole in her heart and spent five of the first six months of her life in the intensive care unit at the University of New Mexico Hospital.
As a teenager, Alfredo Juarez Jr. had his own near-death experience after eating contaminated meat from a vendor’s stand in Mexico City.
For both, the line between life and death was a thin one. But both survived and as fate so often demands, their paths would cross years later.
Friends at first, their relationship slowly,
but steadily grew, eventually blossoming into romance. They were married on Sept. 9th, 2003 and today are the parents of 14-year-old Ashlee and 10-year-old Giancarlo.
By broad definition, they are a racetrack family. But in reality they are so much more.
By necessity, commitment and a good deal of compromise, Lisa and Alfredo are a shining example of how two polar opposites in so many ways can make their sometimes diverse life styles work in unison for a common goal.
Alfredo is a highly successful, New Mexico- based thoroughbred jockey who is nearing 3,000 career wins. Among those wins were a couple aboard War Emblem when the future Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner was a 2-year-old.
Lisa is a paralegal with the district attorney’s office in Albuquerque and working on her bachelor’s degree in criminal justice.
Yes, by most measuring sticks the Juarez’s have a comfortable life. Consider the prophetic irony
in the fact they live right around the corner from Easy Street in Albuquerque’s northwest quadrant.
But theirs is a journey that comes with conditions, not all of them easy. It’s one that requires Alfredo to drive thousands of miles each year just to make sure he sees his kids for a couple of days each week.
One that requires Lisa—with enormous help from her mom Yolanda—to juggle her job with doctors’ appointments for Giancarlo’s asthma condition, dance lessons for Ashlee and all the other day to day educational and recreational needs of their kids.
Ashlee, currently in middle school, has an especially busy schedule. She has been dancing competitively since she was two years old and her schedule requires her to practice four days a week for up to five hours a day.
It’s a life Alfredo probably couldn’t
have imagined when he was five years old selling candy and snow cones alongside his grandmother on the streets of Mexico City.
“My grandmother taught me that if you want something, you have to work for it,’’ says Alfredo.
Back then what Alfredo didn’t want was to grow up to be a jockey. He dreamed of joining the military and flying planes. Besides, his dad, Alfredo Juarez Sr., was a jockey who spent long periods of time away from his family while riding in the United States and Canada. Couple that with the hazardous nature of life on the track and Alfredo Jr. was sure he wanted no part of it.
“My dad would come home with a broken collarbone and other broken bones,’’ says Alfredo. “When I’d come to visit him we were always moving. I thought, hell no I don’t want to be a jockey. I wanted to be a pilot.’’
But alas, he was too short—a little over 4-foot when he was about 10 years old—to join the military.
And in time, the paternal genes kicked in. Soon after finishing the equivalent of high school, Alfredo and his friend Marcos Antonio Silva went to work at the racetrack with Silva’s uncle.
“We wanted to make a little money,’’ says Alfredo. “We took care of seven ponies. We galloped and cleaned bridles and saddles. We did everything.’’
Eventually, Alfredo moved on to working horses at the Hipodromo de las Americas track and that led to him getting one or two rides a week in competitive races. He won his first race the day after his 17th birthday on a filly named Portania.
But he still wasn’t sold on the idea of becoming a fulltime jockey. In Mexico back then, a jockey had to tack no more than 101 pounds and because he had developed a strong upper body and plenty of muscle from his days playing soccer in high school, he had trouble getting below 105 pounds.
“I fought a lot with my weight,’’ he says. “I’d get in the hot box and I was running every day, but that only built up more muscle.’’
So he told his mom he was thinking of quitting the track and going back to school.
30 New Mexico Horse Breeder