In the summertime of 2018, I drove from Orange County to Denver and again for a bunch of freelance assignments. Certainly one of my stops was in Colorado Springs, for a topic I often don’t care about: beer.
I’m extra of a bourbon and mezcal man. However Jess Fierro of Atrevida Beer Co. had invited me to swing by her household enterprise. She and her husband Wealthy had just lately opened the small brewery and taproom, which on the time was one of many solely Latina-run beer corporations in america.
Over a crisp lager, Fierro advised me her story. How she and Wealthy have been highschool sweethearts who grew up in San Diego. How they realized to like the artwork of beer making when Wealthy was stationed as an Military officer in Germany within the 2000s. How Jess, a cosmetologist by commerce, labored up the nerve to do dwelling brewing when the Military transferred Wealthy to Colorado.
Jess talked concerning the thrill of profitable a beer competitors aired on the Vice community. Concerning the fright of turning a passion right into a livelihood. Extra importantly, she advised me, she needed to make a mark as a Mexican American lady, in an trade that was overwhelmingly white and male.
She was going to do it by beers with pan-Latino flavors like guava and tamarind that bore intelligent Spanglish names. Jess summed up her philosophy with the identify “Atrevida,” which interprets as “daring” and is often utilized in Mexican Spanish as a time period of grudging respect for girls who do what they’re not presupposed to.
Sooner or later, her large of a husband joined us. The Fierros have been heat and humorous — and followers of mine. I took images of them in motion, they usually requested in return for a bunch picture. She promptly posted it on Instagram, noting she was “humbled and honored” I had stopped by. I left with a vow to go to Atrevida the following time I used to be in Colorado Springs, and a promise that an article for a nationwide publication was on its manner.
None of that ever got here to be.
My mom was slowly dying of ovarian most cancers. Different freelance assignments took priority. I discovered a full-time job that took me away from writing about meals. The pandemic pushed apart any tales not based mostly in Southern California. As Atrevida started to rightfully obtain nationwide consideration, any article I’d’ve written would’ve been old-fashioned. I finally misplaced the notes and images from my afternoon with the Fierros and needed to transfer on.
They didn’t maintain it in opposition to me. Each every so often, Atrevida Beer Co. popped up within the feedback on the weekly Instagram Dwell periods I do from my private account. At any time when they confirmed up, I’d excitedly plug the brewery and apologize for my oversight from years in the past. When a good friend did his personal profile of Jess and talked about we knew one another, she excitedly advised him about how I had as soon as visited Atrevida.
The Fierros have been the primary folks I considered when information emerged {that a} gunman had opened fireplace at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs on Saturday evening, killing 5 and injuring 18.
I mentioned a prayer for the deceased, bemoaned our nation’s gun legal guidelines and moved on. Hopefully, the Fierros weren’t among the many affected, I assumed.
However Monday afternoon, as I ready to file a podcast episode, an e mail arrived. A reader requested if I had heard the “unhappy information” about Atrevida.
“We visited them awhile again,” the reader wrote, “and noticed an image of you there, so [don’t] know should you’re associates or had simply stopped by.”
I rushed by my recording, then instantly gathered as a lot data as doable. I began with Atrevida’s Instagram account, which I spotted I wasn’t following. It confirmed video of Jess, Wealthy and a few associates, together with their daughter Kassy and her boyfriend Raymond Inexperienced Vance, having fun with an evening out.
Within the caption, Jess revealed that they had been at Membership Q when the gunman, recognized by authorities as 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich, shot up the venue. Jess wrote that she suffered bruising on her proper aspect and that Wealthy injured his palms, knees, and ankle whereas serving to to subdue Aldrich.
Kassy had damaged her knee. The Fierros’ associates “have been shot a number of occasions.” Raymond was killed.
“This cowardly and despicable act of hate has no room in our lives or enterprise,” Fierro wrote. “F–Ok HATE. It has left us and our neighborhood scarred however not damaged. A lot like to everybody.”
I then learn information accounts of what had occurred. Wealthy, who served 4 excursions in Iraq and Afghanistan and had struggled with PTSD, lived as much as the Atrevida identify. He went after the assailant nearly instantly — “I grabbed him by the again of his little cheap-ass armor,” he advised my colleagues. Different tales revealed that he had requested a drag performer to stomp on the gunman along with her excessive heel.
Folks on social media hailed Wealthy as a hero. He shortly dismissed such ideas, telling the New York Instances he was “only a dude.”
Within the wake of the Membership Q tragedy, the feel-good story of Fierro and others who helped to cease the carnage is irresistible to inform. It’s particularly interesting for Latinos, after a 12 months the place we too usually performed the villain, whether or not it was the Uvalde killer or the Los Angeles politicos whose nasty phrases about Blacks, Oaxacans and others have been the antithesis of the welcoming environment at Membership Q.
It pains me {that a} tragedy is what lastly moved me to put in writing concerning the Fierros and Atrevida Beer Co. However everybody ought to know that they have been heroic lengthy earlier than this horrible weekend.
I keep in mind the marquee outdoors the taproom that learn “Variety, It’s All the time on Faucet!” — the identical brand that’s on Wealthy Fierro’s immaculate classic Chevy El Camino. Jess shared with me again then how she needed to face loads of racism and sexism in her trade however bore its welts as a result of she had an vital platform.
That’s why her firm proudly participated in Colorado Springs’ LGBTQ parade, she mentioned — a daring transfer in a metropolis with giant swaths of conservative and evangelical voters. It’s one thing they continued to do by the pandemic. Not solely that, however Jess adopted by on her said plans to mentor different girls and Latino brewers. She even named a few of her suds after Mexican American feminine icons like Dolores Huerta and the late Lengthy Seaside singer Jenni Rivera.
Alex Clemons, left, and his daughter Epifania, 11, hug whereas paying their respects at a makeshift memorial close to Membership Q in Colorado Springs.
(Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Submit through Getty Photos)
After scrolling by Atrevida’s Instagram account, shortly catching up on their previous 4 years, I reread the New York Instances profile of Wealthy. In a single half, he admitted that his evening at Membership Q was the primary time he had ever attended a drag present.
“These children wish to reside that manner, wish to have a very good time, have at it,” he mentioned. “I’m glad about it as a result of that’s what I fought for, to allow them to do regardless of the hell they need.”
If solely the remainder of us have been as atrevidos because the Fierros.
