Horacio Lopez was born on January 12, 1938, in Cordova, New Mexico to Elias and Cordelia Lopez. Lopez describes his hometown as self-sufficient and self-reliant and that his family grew their own food and raised livestock. His father only received a second-grade education and worked as a miner.

“My goal with [pageantry] was: I just want to have as much impact as possible within the community, and then, self-servingly, it’s an amazing networking opportunity; you meet tons and tons of people, and so that’s what I did.”