When what became one of the largest high-quality human services organizations in Arizona first opened its doors to at-risk youth from state tribes, Rose M. Lopez was a child in a small farming community west of Casa Grande.
The Southwest Indian Youth Center, as it was called, was founded in 1973 by Dr. David Giles and a group of graduate students from the University of Kansas. The residential program was installed at an abandoned federal prison camp halfway up Mount Lemon. It welcomed 70-plus adolescents from tribes including Tohono O’odham, Navajo, Apache, White River, Pascua Yaqui, and others.
Who could have known that decades later at what became the Intermountain Centers for Human Development, Lopez — the youngest of eight children of a single mother — would be at the helm as President and CEO of an organization that now serves 20,000 members per year. Services are offered to people with autism or other educational needs, mental illness and developmental disabilities, transitioning from foster care to independent living, housing support and rehab needs, and substance abuse disorders. The organization also works directly with schools in the Tucson Unified School District, Vail, and the Sunnyside school districts, and it currently provides the broad continuum of School-Based Mental Health Services to more than 75 schools in the Tucson metro area.
“When I got into this field I didn’t know that these services existed. I think about how this could have made a difference for so many people I knew,” Lopez said. “That’s still the case today. When I drive through the city and see the homeless people we have, the disparity we have, the inability for people to connect with communities — that’s where I see that my job is not finished.” Lopez stressed the need to develop healthy communities and to do so, one must engage in conversation with the people in those communities. “That work grows every minute, every hour, and every day.”
For her part, Lopez mentors her nieces and nephews in many areas. “They need to know how to change a tire, how to apply for a loan.” While going to work was the number one value passed down from her mother, Ignacia “Nacha” Zepeda, Lopez believes that culture, values, and remembering where you came from are important, but “it’s also not wrong to explore outside of your culture.” The idea of seizing opportunities has been actively passed down from Nacha to the younger generations. “When [nieces and nephews] tell me they’re thinking about doing something, if it’s outside of Tucson or Casa Grande or Arizona, I tell them to take it,” she said, adding that to be happy, each person needs to find out what they want to do every day. “I have 40 nieces and nephews, and close to 30 great-nieces and nephews, and some on that third generation. There are four generations at our barbecues, me being in the older one,” she said, "and there are easily 150 people at family gatherings."
Lopez has modeled the advice she gives the younger generations. Her trajectory took her from that small farming community in Arizona to faraway Germany after enlisting in the U.S. Army in 1985 at the age of 19. After five years in the service, she settled in Charlotte, North Carolina, and lived in Columbia, South Carolina, before returning to Arizona in 2013. Leaving home at 19 and landing on foreign soil practically overnight presented its challenges, but Lopez’s world became bigger, and she learned that there were other ways of life. “For someone who grew up in an environment where everyone looked like me, behaved like me, ate like me, and shared the same cultural norms, Europe was a life-changing experience that helped shape who I am today.” During her time abroad, she lived with a family in West Germany for about a year. “I learned the importance of developing good eating habits,” she noted, adding that in Europe at that time, it was customary to shop for fresh food every couple of days and that was a great lesson for her.
She credits a sister, 10 years her senior, with being her mentor. This sibling modeled that education and experiencing the larger world were important for a well-rounded life. “She was the first to go to college,” Lopez said, “and that’s one important thing I learned from my sister,” she added. “We have a lot of success in our family. It’s driven me and my siblings and it came from my mother. She taught us well.” And though Lopez never enjoyed being in school, she earned a bachelor’s degree and worked for many years as a Certified Public Accountant, among other jobs, and also earned a Master of Business Administration.
Lopez said she found her calling after taking a job at a small foster care program in Columbia, ultimatley changing her life. “They were looking for an executive director. I said sure, I’ll try it." This job opened her eyes to the support that was out there for at-risk communities and people in need. As a young girl, she, her mother, and siblings were no strangers to living in poverty and needing access to human services. “Financially, it was hard, and we were poor but that did not stop my mother from providing a structured home environment and teaching us values; this, in my opinion, was priceless and enriched our lives.” Lopez recalls going with her mom to the “social security office” to stop the food stamps and child welfare payments in the summer months when Nacha worked.
Lopez recounts how a living, breathing, courageous idea that “opportunity exists and one must not be afraid to pursue it,” was inspired by her mother, a woman who spoke English, Spanish, and her native tongue. Working in the fields with older children all those years ago allowed Nacha to be a stay-at-home parent during the school year, caring for her children and keeping them focused on their education. While Nacha and the older kids were working the fields, Lopez and the younger children spent time at their grandfather’s ranch across the border in Sonora on the Tohono O’odham Nation, where Nacha was born. “It was very primitive living,” Lopez said about the ranch. “We got to know the stars very well. We would wake up with chickens pecking at our heads; drink water from the well. To have fun, we’d go swimming in the trough,” she said with a dimpled smile. It wasn’t long before Lopez followed in the footsteps of her mother and siblings and at age 13, she also began working in the cotton fields during the summer. “We had to chop weeds, spray weeds, whatever needed to be done,” she said.
Nacha came to Arizona when she was 17, along with her younger brother she was in charge of raising after her mother left the family. “She got her green card,” Lopez said of the permit her mother received that allowed her to work and live permanently in the United States. She remained a member of the Tohono O’odham Nation.
Once in Arizona, Nacha chose to never live on the reservation. “She believed in her opportunity in America and the ability to raise a family in a somewhat healthy environment. She didn’t want us to have that life that others experienced on the reservation,” Lopez explained. “She understood there were no resources there.” Even though life in her farm town of Stanfield offered a home, school, and working the fields, human services and resources were scant. “I suspect my mother never sought a full-time job because she could not write English, she only spoke it,” Lopez explained.
Today, Lopez marvels at the resources and services the Intermountain organization and its affiliates provide throughout the state. She admits that she was initially skeptical that residential programs and services could be delivered successfully and well. When the opportunity of becoming Chief Financial Officer presented itself about a decade ago, she explained to Dr. Giles, who was heavily recruiting her, that she was not looking for a job. Lopez had a “grand plan,” she told him, and taking this on was not part of it. But all roads were leading to Tucson, and after giving it more thought and remembering her mother’s call to action, Lopez wholeheartedly embraced the challenge and returned in 2013.
She answered the call of opportunity once again in 2016 and stepped into her current role as President and CEO. She acknowledges that it took enormous commitment and energy to move “from a mountain to where we are today,” she said in a short video about the organization on its 50th anniversary in 2023. She is keenly aware that the caring, compassionate, and empathetic people who contribute to the organization as staff and stakeholders at all levels have the passion and drive to see the work continue and adapt to changes over the next 50 years.
Services at Intermountain Centers for Human Development:
Since 1973, we have been serving Arizona communities, each year innovating and advancing our primary care and behavioral health programs and services.
Today, our family of organizations serves a broad spectrum of individuals, including:
• Children diagnosed with Autism and/or specialized educational needs
• Children and adolescents who are emotionally and/or behaviorally challenged
• Children and adolescents transitioning from one care facility to another
• Adolescents aging out of foster care and/or group residential care to independent living
• Adults who have been diagnosed with a serious mental illness and/or developmental disabilities
• Adults with general mental health needs
• Adults with housing support and rehab needs
• Adults transitioning to independent living
• Treatment and coordination of services for those with substance use disorders