When Dominic Romero was alive, he would tell his mom, “All I want to do is rope in Las Vegas. I can’t wait until I turn 21.”
As we detailed in our November 2019 story “A Mother’s Love,” Michelle Arbizo’s youngest of five sons was already 13 when he decided he wanted to become a team roper after watching a perf at his local rodeo, Tucson’s La Fiesta de los Vaqueros.
So, she’d bought him his first horse and he’d spent a year learning to ride in the desert every day after wrestling or football practice. Then she’d gotten him a job working at Rudy Clark’s Arizona ropings, pushing up steers. He began practicing and, with Clark’s help, eventually began entering.
Clark and Arbizo became engaged and the three lived together as a family while Clark spent years mentoring Dominic. Clark would take them both with him when he roped at the Finale in Las Vegas each year, and Dominic became infatuated with the big event. He began winning jackpots and planned to rodeo in college for Central Arizona College.
Navigating Loss
But a month before he graduated high school, Dominic and his mom found Clark dead. Their shock and sorrow were unending. And Dominic decided he didn’t want to leave his grieving mom. He’d already been her rock through her divorce from his father, always telling her, “You got this, Mom.”
Friends had nicknamed him “CheChe” thanks to his love for his mother. He took her out dancing, threw her a fabulous 50th birthday bash and always came up behind her to hug her while she cooked dinner or washed dishes. Dominic got himself a job installing gas lines. He saved all his money to buy a truck and trailer so he could go jackpotting on weekends with his buddies. His desire to make Clark proud continued to drive him even harder to get good at heading.
“He was improving every week and on his way to being successful,” said producer Miguel “Guerrero” Martinez of Savantos Land and Cattle. “He’d be getting his number raised soon. He really enjoyed it. And his mom was right there—always hauling with him and going to watch him practice.”
Dominic had made his mom promise she’d also learn to rope so they could enter the family roping at a special jackpot. And his mom—his ride-or-die—promised she’d take him to Las Vegas whenever he turned 21 and qualified for “roping’s Super Bowl.”
But Dominic was killed late one night in January 2019, on his 20th birthday, in a hit-and-run while walking home from his party on a road outside Marana, Arizona. The driver was never identified. The unfathomable impact on Michelle was such that her worried family was afraid to let her be alone.
“After my son passed away, I thought, what do I do with his horses, his truck, his trailer?” recalled Michelle.
Riding Through Grief
One day, as a way to feel close to her son and assuage the tsunami of grief, she saddled his big sorrel head horse. Riding gave her some peace. Every day, she’d ride his horse, rope his dummy and play with his dog.
“That was my circle,” she recalled. “Me, the dog and the horse. That’s where I felt Dominic the most; that’s when I realized, I still need to rope with Dominic.”
So Guerrero started pulling the machine and helping her work on her roping every night. Her goal? To rope in that special jackpot two months away.
“At first it seemed so hard,” said Arbizo, whose father team roped and who rode horses as a kid until her parents’ divorce. “I thought, ‘How do these people ride and keep their balance and swing and focus on catching?’ It was like, ‘What am I getting myself into? Maybe this is not the commitment that I need to be making to honor my son.’ But it got a little bit easier over time.”
Arbizo drove nearly an hour one way every single day after work to practice at Guerrero’s, until he offered to just keep her horse during the week.
“She stuck with it,” Guerrero said. “A lot of nights, she was sore. You could see the frustration on her face. But she persevered to reach that goal and she didn’t give up. It inspired a lot of people; they saw the progress we had in such a short time.”
Arbizo entered other jackpots that fall, showing up in her son’s hard-won pickup and trailer. It was just the beginning. Arbizo moved into a rental house on Guerrero’s ranch southeast of Tucson after about a year, which made it easier to practice. Plus, it got her out of her old Marana home filled with memories of her fiancé and son. She also began producing the Dominic Romero Memorial Roping every spring in Marana. It gets a huge turnout, because her full-of-life son never knew a stranger.
“He used to always tell me how all the ropers were so friendly; that it was just a big family,” said Arbizo.
Setbacks and Strength
She’d first begun learning to rope on her son’s horse they’d purchased from the handy Travis Ericsson. That gelding had to be retired a couple years later due to arthritis, which still draws tears from Arbizo. She bought another horse she called Amigo, and he got hurt. More recently, she bought a gelding she calls Machaca. But finding the right horse wasn’t the only speed bump. Two and a half years ago, Arbizo was bucked off and broke her pelvis in three places.
“At that point, honestly, I asked myself what the hell I was doing,” recalled Arbizo. “I thought, ‘I’m too old for this; maybe I need to throw in the towel.’”
But with the help of pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, Arbizo was sidelined only six weeks instead of the expected 12. She went back to roping. Then, about a year and a half ago, she was in such a slump, missing steers, that she wanted to sell everything. She was fighting her head so much she actually downloaded Lyman Tenney’s Mental Game course, which helped get her out of the rut. And Arbizo said that, at night, she’d glance at the big picture of Dominic in her bedroom and tell him silently she was worried he’d think she was a failure if she gave up. Then she’d sleep on it. And go practice again the next day.
Fast-forward to 2025. Arbizo has won saddles, spurs and buckles. But her ultimate dream was always to fulfill Dominic’s goal of making it to Las Vegas.
“He wanted to rope there so bad. I thought, ‘I’ve got to get him there, in body or spirit,’” she recalled. “I told everybody, ‘I’m going to take my baby to Vegas one day. I’m going to get him there.’”
Arbizo, now 57, said it helped her roping this summer when she was able to start working from home as a surgery scheduler for Tucson Orthopedic Institute. That meant she could get up at 5 a.m. and rope before clocking in at 8. Her other kids wondered when she’d stop roping and just be a grandma (Arbizo has 11 grandchildren).
“When I need to sit in a rocking chair and hold grandbabies, I’ll do that,” she said. “But I’m not ready to only be a grandma yet.”
In fact, over the past six months, Mackenzie Parker has taken Arbizo under her wing and coached her on handling cattle, infusing her with confidence to where Arbizo started winning. Plus, in July, just a few nights before she was scheduled to go rope at the Qualifier in Williams over the Fourth of July weekend—and her birthday—Dominic appeared to her in a dream and spoke for the first time since his tragic death.
“He literally put his arms around me and said, ‘I love you, Mom. Things are going to be okay for you,’” recalled Arbizo. “He kind of came up behind me and gave me that big hug, like he used to do.”
A Promise Fulfilled
Three months ago—more than five years after Arbizo made a vow to her son that she would take him to the $19 million Ariat World Series of Team Roping Finale—and despite falling short in three previous short rounds, she did it. At Jack Fuller’s WSTR Qualifier in Williams, Arizona, Michelle and Leo Bonnie of Tuba City were ninth callback but stuck it on three steers in 36.76 seconds to barely get moved to second. They still earned $6,990 and Finale qualifications in the #7.5.
“It was time,” said Arbizo, who rode out of the arena before bailing off her horse to run to her father in celebration. “I needed this. Dominic has been my drive this entire time. It’s what motivated me. It’s what pushed me through all of the time. He was my best friend. We did everything together.”
She and Bonnie had never roped together before, but he’d seen her at ropings all over Arizona with her brother. He had told her more than once after he’d heard her story, “I’m going to take you to Vegas.”
Arbizo had to slam a beer to quell her nerves before the short round, but it felt like a done deal because of her dream and Bonnie’s certainty. Plus, when she rides into a box, she can usually hear Dominic’s voice saying, “Mom, you got this.”
Michelle said she couldn’t have done it without the support of her brother and her dad, who helped her buy her first head horse. She’s grateful to Guerrero for all his help with her roping, and to Parker, the switchender who won the #11.5 that day and with whom she also made the #7.5 short round. And Mark Morales and his wife made a habit of sticking around each Qualifier to watch, she said. Mark always told her to shake off a bad day roping; to let it go and stay strong. Don’t give up.
“I’ve been at it really hard for the last five years,” said Arbizo. “In Williams, we were all emotional. In Vegas, I don’t know how I’ll hold it together. But it’s going to feel like half of Tucson will be in Vegas with me that whole week. I’ve gained such a big following. My son was so well-known and so loved by so many people. People were immediately calling me, asking when I’d be roping in Vegas so they could make reservations.”
Lest anyone wonder if she’ll stop roping now that she’s fulfilled her promise to Dominic, the answer is no, never. Arbizo’s passion has been ignited, despite the fact that roping is hard. For someone to have learned in middle age, while working full-time, financially strapped and devastated by grief, well, that’s amazing.
“There was a time I tried to give up,” Michelle said. “I told my brother, ‘I’m selling the horses and the trailer; I can’t figure this out.’ I struggled with Machaca; we couldn’t click, and I kept asking myself, ‘What am I doing?’”
But when you ask this loving mother how she got through those tough times, her answer is simple: she talked to her son.
“I kept going back to this promise I made him,” she said. “I couldn’t let him down.”
Michelle’s brother Joseph Arbizo, a 5 header, will be her biggest cheerleader in Las Vegas come December.
“Once she backs into that head box at the South Point, Dominic can see the Finale through her eyes,” he said proudly.
—TRJ—
