Lightweight contender Roger Huerta relaxes in the bathroom of his locker room on Feb. 2 before his Ultimate Fighting Championship fight at Mandalay Bay. Photo by John Locher.
UFC lightweight contender Roger Huerta kisses friend Lynette Rahm, a production coordinator for mixed martial arts promoter Zuffa, in his locker room at Mandalay Bay on Feb. 2. Photo by John Locher.
UFC fighter Roger Huerta works out at Mandalay Bay on Jan. 31 in preparation for his Feb. 2 lightweight fight against John Halverson. Photo by John Gurzinski.
His teachers used to look at 7-year-old Roger Huerta and suspect something wasn't quite right. He smiled and was sweet like cherubic-faced 7-year-olds can be, but they sensed trouble bubbling beneath the surface.
None of those teachers and school administrators, though, were able to penetrate his tough exterior. Even as a first-grader, Roger Huerta was a fighter, determined to protect the only life he had known.
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And so when he would be asked if everything was all right in his private life, Huerta played defense.
"They would ask me, 'Is everything OK at home? Is there anything going on you need to tell us about?' " Huerta said. "And I always said, 'No. I'm fine. Nothing is going on.' "
There was a lot to tell, but Huerta wasn't sure where, or how, to begin. And so, for a long time, he kept his mother's physical and mental abuse to himself.
Huerta is now one of the world's rising mixed martial arts stars, owner of an 18-1-1 record and on the fast track to a shot at the Ultimate Fighting Championship's lightweight title.
But as a vulnerable, scared 7-year-old, Huerta didn't want to disrupt the only life he knew. Instead of telling his teachers the truth, he lied and said everything was fine.
It was the start of a journey in which the now 23-year-old would be abandoned as a child in foreign countries twice. He had to live on the streets for a time, selling rosaries and chewing gum.
He bounced from foster home to foster home until he happened upon a sympathetic woman, Maria King, who took pity on him and brought him into her home.
"I guess my life could be a movie, but it's hard for me, having lived it, to think about it in those terms," Huerta said. "It's just all I know. I don't know how it's supposed to be for anyone else. I just know how it was for me."
Trouble began for Huerta when he was 7, when his father began an extra-marital affair. His mother found out about her husband's infidelity and didn't deal with the shock very well.
"She just broke down," he said, softly. "She went nuts."
His father, Rogelio, obtained custody of him, and, for a while, things were normal.
But one day, his mother, Lydia, picked him up without permission and took him from Texas to El Salvador.
She soon left El Salvador, but left her son behind with her parents.
The country was in the midst of a civil war and his grandparents wouldn't let him leave the house. But the athletic and precocious 7-year-old couldn't understand why he was a prisoner in his maternal grandparents' home.
His mother returned less than a year later to claim him, but she wouldn't play a role in his life for very long.
"She dropped me on the doorstep at my Dad's and she took off," Huerta said. "I was like, 'Thank, God,' but that didn't turn out to be pleasant, either."
His father had remarried by that point and Huerta said he was physically and mentally abused by his stepmother.
The abuse continued until Rogelio Huerta discovered it. He hauled his son off to Mexico and left the then-8-year-old with his paternal grandparents.
He was again in a foreign land and faced with desperate circumstances.
"They were very poor and no one had money for anything, so everyone worked," Huerta said. "And that meant me, too."
He hit the streets each day, trying to hawk rosaries and chewing gum to tourists. And then, just like in El Salvador when his mother arrived, his father showed up in Mexico to claim him.
But upon returning to the United States, the abuse from his stepmother continued, but his father wasn't able to save him. Rogelio Huerta had begun abusing drugs, Roger Huerta said, and was no longer playing a role in his life.
Huerta wound up on the street, bouncing from home to home, living with anyone who would take him. He grew to love school, he said, because it meant a free breakfast and a free lunch.
The burning feeling in the pit of his stomach would disappear as he tore into the school cafeteria food.
"If there was no school, a lot of times I just wouldn't eat," he said. "I had to learn to deal with it. I always looked forward to school, because I knew I'd get two meals at least."
He was hungry for a stable home life, though, and wound up at 12 joining a notorious street gang, the TCB Bombers. He lived with the 25-year-old gang leader, who, despite selling drugs, encouraged Huerta to stay in school and avoid drugs.
But, typical of the way his life had gone, the house was raided by police in a drug bust.
He was again on his own.
"I was in eighth grade and that's when everything caught up to me," he said. "I hate to say it, but I stopped believing in God at that point. I said, 'There can't be a God if all this stuff keeps going on.' It just sucked."
This time, though, he had a saving grace. He had begun playing sports and was good at anything he tried. And so parents of his teammates began to look out for him.
He still bounced from place to place, but at least he wasn't sleeping in the streets or living with drug-dealing gang members.
King was one of those he stayed with, but she didn't simply pass him off. She went to court to get custody of him and Huerta lived with her until he was 18. He developed the first semblance of a traditional family life he had known since he was a little boy.
But after a move to Austin, Texas, King caught her fiance cheating on her. The result was a move into a one-bedroom apartment, which she shared with her son, Enrique, and Huerta.
It wasn't a great situation and he was prepared for the worst, but he said a lot of things came together when he began his senior year at Crockett High School.
He met wrestling coach Bryan Ashford, whom he called "an amazing man," as well as an English teacher named Jo Ramirez.
Ashford said that despite his rough life, he never saw a hint of trouble from Huerta.
"You don't meet a lot of kids like him, who were as focused on a goal as he was," Ashford said. "Everything we did, he wanted to be the best. At every practice, he wanted to run sprints the hardest. He wanted to get better. He wanted to make something of his life and he was willing to devote every part of himself to it.
"He was guarded with his emotions, but he wasn't what I would call rough around the edges. He was a pleasant kid who had an incredible desire.
'' He was a coach's dream. Anything I asked him to do, he did to the utmost of his ability."
At the same time he met Ashford, he happened upon Ramirez. She found him to be a pleasant, interested student, but didn't know a lot about him until he asked for her help in writing letters to college wrestling coaches.
He told her his personal history. The mother of seven was amazed by what she heard.
"Each day that went by, we got closer and closer," Ramirez said. "He was such a sweet kid even though he had been through so much trauma. His disposition amazes me, but I've never found him bitter and he's always been so good and giving."
Ramirez decided to adopt Huerta when he was a freshman at Augsburg College in Minneapolis.
He flew home for Thanksgiving and found himself rolling on the floor, playing with his new nephews.
And on Christmas Eve, one of his new brothers sidled up to him and nodded toward the commotion in the house.
"This," Ramirez responded, motioning to all the family members around the house.
A warm glow overtook Huerta.
"Yeah, it does," he said. "It really does."
Beau Ramirez then pulled Huerta in close. "You know, you don't just have her as your mom. You have all of us. You're our brother; you're part of the family. You're one of us."
For the first time in his life, Roger Huerta was really, truly at home.
It had taken him a lot longer and it had been a more circuitous path than most, but he had finally gotten home.
"It hit me hard and he almost had me in tears," Huerta said. "I felt like I'd found my real family. Everything I'd been through in my life, I could look past it because I have my own family now."
