Juan Lucero

(Sept, 19th 1940 – Feb. 24th 2026)

Attitude is everything. What is meant by this? It’s how you orient yourself to life when circumstances seem insurmountable. The Stoics knew this: It’s not what happens to you, but how you react that matters. And so, it is embodied because you are born into this: one of 11 children growing up in cramped quarters, devouring everything on your plate, turning a cardboard box into a sled as you play with your siblings on the dusty foothills near Palace Ave. Shoe shine & newspaper boy, essential middle-child helper, all the little chores that will blossom into courage and self-discipline. Dirt poor was the training ground for later successes.

You will take the formative path of the multitudes: St. Francis Parochial School, Harvey Junior High and Santa Fe High School where your athleticism will bring you glory as the State Champion runner-up with the legendary 1959 basketball Team.

After graduation, stints as a laborer, Coca Cola Delivery Driver then enlistment in the Airforce (1962-1966). The world opens up: Korea, Japan, and yes, even Nebraska where you will learn the basics of electronics. But it is while stationed at a communications installation in Gorramendi in the Pyrénées that your life would reach a milestone. While on leave in the nearby coastal city of Biarritz, you would meet your future wife (Mylene Lapegue) and build a new life for yourself. It happens quickly: VW Bug cross country pick-up of your bride to be, making a home (mobile) and a kiddo in Las Vegas, N.M., where you persevered for a Bachelor’s Degree, later a Master of Arts at Highlands. Life continues: hitching that mobile home between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, teaching electronics to future Intel techies at T.V.I., saving enough to buy a “real” house, repairing T.V.’s on the side, then an opportunity to work for the Dept. of Education as a supervisor for the Division of Vocational Education. Then, the effects of pinche cabron Reaganomics (DOGE 1.0) left you jobless. But the “devil drives” and on a parcel of land on the southside of town that you and your beloved invested in, you build an extraordinary house.

You would build three more after retiring to the lush rain forests of Costa Rica, that nagging Conquistador whispering “búsqueda” into your restless mind… fincas de café, iguanas in bromeliad-ed trees falling onto corrugated roofs, the jungle thrum of raucous birds waking you at 5am…

For 30 odd years ̶ under your protective wing ̶ you nurture a gaggle of street urchins because deep down you are one of them. And they grow to honor your name because there was always an encouraging word, fair-mindedness and the world is kinder and better when you believe in another person less fortunate than yourself.

Even in your last months ̶ the body racked by ailments ̶ you still find the humor…the joy through the suffering. You were always and always will be what only a few can attain:

Magnanimous.