It takes just as much chutzpah to enlist in the armed services at 17 (requiring parental permission) as it does to convince a police chief to allow his officer to use their rope horse at work. 

Liz Loring has done both.

Loring had a mobile upbringing as the daughter of a dad in the Navy and a mom in the Army (plus a sister in the Air Force). In third grade, she went with a friend to a riding lesson and fell in love with horses. Soon, she was taking lessons of her own.

But Loring never loved school and graduated early with an eye on joining the armed services. She chose the Marines after someone said she wouldn’t cut it.

She spent four years as a mechanic working on F/A-18 fighter jets like those featured in Top Gun: Maverick, then another year as a coach on the rifle and pistol range.

“I went to Japan, Australia and Korea several times, and all over the United States,” Loring, 37, said.

Picking Up the Rope

When she got out, she went to college in Texas with veterinary school in mind. That’s when roping found her.

“My neighbor was giving roping lessons, so I took some,” she recalled. “Then I found Charly Crawford’s clinic and attended that first year with no horse and just planned to rope the dummy—but the second day, he let me ride one of his horses!”

In the meantime, Loring discovered that school still wasn’t her thing. So, she ventured into law enforcement.

Women make up only 12 to 13 percent of sworn officers, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics data, and Loring spent years working the 12-hour overnight shift in a field where she knew she had to prove herself.

“A female police officer has to work extra hard just to be seen as mediocre,” said Loring, who joined the San Marcos Police Department seven years ago after working as a corrections officer for the Travis County Sheriff’s Office. “But it wasn’t something I focused on.”

Instead, she kept working—and kept roping.

She saved up the money to buy a head horse and attended the Horns ’N Heroes Clinic put on by Crawford, a 10-time NFR header, in 2021.

“I’ve been volunteering there ever since, and I’m an ambassador for his foundation now,” she said. “Every year, I take a week off work to spend in Decatur.”

Loring’s spouse also team ropes (both ends), and they now live on five acres with their five horses. Plus, her in-laws, who used to provide mule teams and wagons on set for Taylor Sheridan’s television shows, gave the couple a mule team and two wagons.

“We went up to Cheyenne Frontier Days and drove a stagecoach in the parade,” Loring said.

A Rope Horse on Patrol

But horses aren’t just part of Loring’s life away from work. After spending years convincing her department head to launch a mounted unit, they’ve also become part of how she serves her community. Now, she takes her rope horse to community engagement events and rides him in evidence recovery and search-and-rescue efforts.

“It can offer a unique way of interacting with the police that people haven’t experienced before,” Loring said. “A horse is extremely approachable and gets people talking. Since I’ve been an officer in San Marcos, I’ve never experienced as much community interaction as I have when I’m with my horse—much more than driving around in a patrol car.”

Some of her fellow officers are still a little nervous around horses, but they appreciate what a mounted unit can do.

“We had one call where a guy shot somebody then ran and tossed the gun,” Loring recounted. “We caught him a couple of miles away. So I went out on my horse, which was better than searching for that gun on foot.”

When she’s not on duty, Loring enters local jackpots and World Series ropings while continuing to promote Crawford’s Liberty & Loyalty Foundation as its lone female ambassador.

For Loring, roping is more than competition. It’s the piece of life that belongs entirely outside the uniform.

“Roping is something we have outside of work,” she said of her love for the American Hero Celebration. “We need something that’s completely unrelated to anything we do in policing or in the military—this is an escape from all that.”

—TRJ—

Thank you to Equinety for helping us share stories of military members, veterans and first responders in the team roping community.