Yolanda Ortega Still Playing | John Moore | Arts & Entertainment

Yolanda Ortega Don’t know how to quit. (Seriously, she’s tried it three times.)

Instead, the 50-year veteran of higher education administration — and 48 years as a dame of the Chicano theater community in Denver — is running to be the first representative of the new UC board of trustees. Create the 8th Congressional District.

“I’m just not ready to stop serving,” said Ortega, who ran for political office for the first time and would only say it started at age seven.

Ortega won her first race in the June 28 primary with 56 percent of the 8-District Democratic vote. She will now face Republican Mark Vanderbilt in what is expected to be a competitive November election.

In fact, Anthony J. Garcia, executive artistic director of Denver’s Su Teatro (meaning “your theater”) has just one friendly piece of advice for anyone who thinks they can slow her down:

“Go away.”

The only thing that has slowed her down over the past 50 years was hitting her car in 1991 while waiting for the bus to work. In addition to his work at the university, Ortega starred in the third installment of the SU Theatre (now seven).Community running,” a groundbreaking drama that captures the Vietnam-era moment when the Chicano family on Denver’s West Side was evicted to make way for the Auraria campus. On her way into the operating room, Ortega managed to get it before she called Garcia A replacement was arranged.

She’s the kind of person who gets things done – and then undergoes emergency surgery.

“When I heard about this new area where I live, it suddenly dawned on me, yes, I want to serve in that capacity,” Ortega said. “I think I still have a lot to contribute in terms of helping students, faculty. That’s what feeds me. And there’s a lot of work to do.”

10 Regents University of Colorado System Council, each serving a six-year term. They oversee the university’s budget, hire senior officials, and set tuition fees. Now, they’re thinking about what conference their sports teams will play next.

According to the 2020 U.S. Census, the new congressional district stretches along Interstate 25 and includes parts of Brighton, Commerce City, Greeley, Johnstown, North Glen and Thornton. Registered Democrats have a 3-point advantage in the region, which also has the largest Hispanic population of Colorado’s eight districts at 38.5 percent — both advantages for Ortega.

Ortega is the eldest of six girls born to Mexican parents through an arranged marriage. She said her father grew up in Kansas, and “life was pretty tough for Latinos at the time,” she said.He was promoted to Air Force Sergeant and stationed in Panama, where Yolanda grew up because even after her father was transferred, her mother stayed there because she was fed up with the prejudice she often faced in the U.S.

Ortega’s father instilled in his daughter the need to master English and go to college — and Yolanda did, majoring in history and German at Arkansas and earning a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Colorado Denver. Still, Ortega wasn’t fully aware of the importance of education to her parents until her father retired and earned his college degree when he was nearing age 70, while her mother, who only had a sixth-grade education, received a GED.

“It tells you how important critical education is to them,” she said.

After graduating from Arkansas in 1972, a friend told Ortega that she should go to Colorado with her. Here she comes, out of sight, with empty bank accounts, and she’s found a forever home. A family friend told her that there was a vacancy for a secretary in the Metro Chicano Studies department. Ortega was hired on the spot mainly because, ironically, she was one of the only Spanish speakers there. Over time, she will rise from secretary to dean to vice president of student services.

Ortega, who attended high school in Delaware, knew about the Chicano movement as a child, but she learned it quickly.That same week, she was hired by Metro as a 27-year-old student activist and Fort Lupton native Ricardo Falcon He was killed at a gas station in what was called a “racist-fueled murder” en route to a Texas organization convention.

“As secretary of Chicano Studies, I had to get a lot of calls,” Ortega said, “so I had to quickly learn who he was and what the Chicano movement was.”

In 1974, Garcia’s life and her activism changed forever when she heard Ortega and Debra Gallegos sing at a party. Since then, both have been members of the Su Teatro Company, cornerstone members of a troupe born out of protests that uses storytelling as a tool for activists for social justice.

At first, Ortega separated her jobs at the university and Su Teatro—until she met a young Chicana who couldn’t see her job as an administrator.

That job is to help student groups—mostly non-traditional students and Vietnam veterans—understand the inner workings of the university and understand what programs are available to them. The young Chicana could not have known that Ortega was often featured in local stage plays about the struggle, or that she participated in the original United Farm Workers boycott as a union volunteer.

“She came up to me and said, ‘You know, Yolanda, you’ll never, never know what it’s like to be a Chicana and try to be successful in higher education. You don’t know the problems we’re going through. and the isolation we feel.'”

Ortega nearly cried: “I told her, ‘I know,’ that he was the only Brown student in Arkansas. But she just didn’t believe me.” To her, Ortega was “the government.”

That all changed a few days later, when that Chicana happened to be at a show at Su Teatro in Denver. Illyria-Swansea neighborhoodAfterwards, the woman approached Ortega in tears and said, “I don’t think you’re part of us, but, yes, you are.” It was a defining moment for Ortega.

“From that day on, I never hid from the other world,” she said. “I integrated them as best I could. It made me whole. I fell in love with college. I fell in love with the sport. I fell in love with SU theatre. I had it all. I found a community where I could root, It’s something I’ve never had before. I’ve found a family.”

Ortega has played many seminal roles over the decades, including Madonna of Brava in the powerful adaptation of “The Brave Mother and Her Child.”But Garcia thinks Ortega’s winning work 2016’s “bless me (religion, Genesis” not lower than”performance of a generation“—that came a few months after she had both knee reconstructions.

Rudolf AnayaThis controversial coming-of-age story dares to show a protagonist who struggles not only with his Chicano identity, but also with his ingrained Catholic faith in rural New Mexico in the 1940s. Ortega plays Ultima, a character blessed with a spiritual power that is respected and cared for.

“It was Yolanda who brought that weight, experience and importance to her portrayal of Genesis,” Garcia said.. “For a smaller actor, that can be a difficult level to achieve.”

Ortega, who has been working with young people as a trainer and mentor during her time at Metro and Su Teatro, says it will serve her well if she wins in November. Her greatest accomplishments in higher education to date, she said, are programs she has initiated or assisted, including the Richard Castro Visiting Professor, the Martin Luther King Jr. Peace Breakfast and statewide Women of Color in Higher Education Project.She joined CU Denver professor Laura Cuetara for an ongoing San Kajetan Unity Plan, It was designed to connect the displaced Westside community with the Catholic Church still on the Auraria campus and is still regarded by many as the spiritual center of the community.

“Yolanda’s greatest strength is bringing people together, listening to a lot of voices, and then pushing the team forward,” Garcia said. “She’s a consensus builder. She doesn’t move things from the top, but from the middle. She’s very good at helping people learn how to take big strides on their own.”

The birth of the Su Theatre, to a large extent, stemmed from the dishonesty of an age of anger. Fifty years later, Ortega still seems fitting as a bridge to support any student who needs someone in their corner.

“I’m glad I followed my instincts, but never had any issues with me running,” she said. “I have a job to do. But whether I’m regent or not, I’ll still serve.”