Today's News

As a young girl, Anastacia Rivera imagined herself healing people in her native El Pueblo in the Villanueva Valley and thought about medicine as a profession.

“Since I was little, I always played doctor. I like helping people, and I think being a nurse you’ll always have a job,” Rivera said. She is taking the nursing curriculum at Luna Community College and says she hopes to be on the job in just a few more years.

Sigfredo Maestas, Luna Community College’s interim president, says he has changed a number of things in his year at the helm, including the centralizing of purchasing. Such actions have angered some, he acknowledges.

“I know that as a result of the things I did, I won’t be liked by everyone here,” he said. “I put a stop to a number of things we shouldn’t be doing.”

But Maestas didn’t want to detail all of his changes out of fear that such information would reflect poorly on Luna officials.

Hundreds visited a reception on Friday to honor the state hospital’s retiring interim administrator, Steve Martinez.

Health Secretary Alfredo Vigil has named the hospital’s deputy administrator, Troy Jones, to replace Martinez, who was the interim administrator for three years.

Martinez, who is a Mora native, has been at the hospital — known formally as the New Mexico Behavioral Institute — for the last 27 years, working in positions such as administrative budget analyst and deputy hospital administrator.

Jasmine Garcia, the 6-year-old girl killed nearly two weeks ago, lived a short, troubled life, court documents show.

Over the last few years, her parents, Ruby Sanchez, 25, and Michael Garcia, 29, pleaded guilty to a number of crimes, two of which involved Jasmine as the victim.

Las Vegas police have yet to charge anyone in Jasmine’s death. Jasmine, who had recently completed her kindergarten year, was sleeping in her mother’s bed at 304 Union St., when a shot ripped through an outside wall facing the street.