All About Maria

Maria was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the United States oldest state capital. Maria’s mother is Dora Garduño who lives in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, and her father is Donaldo Roybal resides in Nambe, New Mexico.  Maria is the oldest of four children; her brothers are Fernando and Miguel; Camila is her sister. Fernando is married to Melissa Montaño, and lives on the family farm in Nambe. Kirk and Maria spend every Sunday night going to church and trading dinners with Fernando and Melissa. Miguel lives in Tucson with his wife, Kristen Bierck. Camila lives in Santa Fe with her boyfriend Matt and recently finished studying abroad in Barcelona, Spain.

Maria spent her childhood living on an organic dairy farm in Nambe. Her grandfather, Pablo Roybal, started this ranch in the late 1940’s, and many of his children and grandchildren live and work on the farm today.  Her grandfather was a school board member of the Pojoaque Valley Schools for over twenty years and the new Pojoaque Elementary was named after him.  Maria fondly remembers working with her dad, brothers, grandfather, and uncles milking cows, raising lambs, and maintaining the crops.  She also remembers cooking, making tortillas and pies, gardening and canning fruit with her mom, grandmother, and aunts.

Maria spent a lot of her childhood in 4-H.  She raised many animals to save money for college. These included market lambs, Navaho Churro sheep, dairy cattle, pigs, chickens, rabbits...basically everything. In high school, she competed to be on the State 4-H leadership team, and represented New Mexico in Washington D.C. for National 4-H Conference as a State 4-H Ambassador.  Her winning recordbook, a summary of her 4-H career, won her a trip to Chicago for National 4-H Congress. She graduated from Pojoaque High School in 1993.

Maria began her college education at New Mexico State University. While she enjoyed her time there, it wasn’t the right school (Las Cruces was too hot and dry) for her and so she eventually moved to Seattle, WA in 1997.  While there, she started work at Starbucks. This was a fulfilling way to integrate into the Seattle community and meet a lot of people. While at Starbucks most notably, she worked at the flagship Starbuck’s store and the busiest Starbucks store in the world, serving 2,000 people by 8:00 am. This store had five espresso bars and two dedicated lines for drip coffee. She knew hundreds of customers by first name and memorized even more "regular" drink orders. After a couple of years, she was recruited by a regular customer at Royal and Sunalliance Insurance Company. She moved from the Plaza level of The Wells Fargo Tower to the 27th floor of the same building. The building was shaped to optimize the view of Elliott Bay and the Cascade Mountain range. Working in Seattle was a phenomenal experience. After September 11, 2001 Maria decided she missed her family more than she loved Seattle, and she decided to move back to New Mexico in 2002, just in time to meet Kirk a short six months later.

Maria holds two degrees in Fine Arts and Graphic Design from the University of New Mexico. She was a member of Phi Theta Kappa honor society.

While finishing school and a year after finishing, she was the in-house graphic designer for a construction management company in Santa Fe.  She has worked for Harris Consultants, LLC for four years and designed their visual presentations and handouts, direct mail, website, advertisements and proposals.   See their website that Maria designed at www.harrisnm.com. In March 2008 Maria left Harris to become a full time, professional Mom. This has certainly been the most gratifying job to date. She also enjoys working freelance design jobs once in a while.  Maria is active in her professional organization, American Institute of Graphic Artists (AIGA), the New Mexico Chapter and with the Santa Fe Macintosh User’s Group.

In her free time, Maria enjoys spending time with Kirk and her daughter Leah, born March 23, 2008. She also loves to do yoga, watching movies, spending time with extended family, painting, drawing, photography, and decorating our home.

All About Kirk

Kirk was born and raised in Santa Rosa, CA, in Sonoma County, one of the world’s most beautiful wine regions.  Kirk’s mother Linda Carlson lives in Santa Rosa and is married to Ray Carlson.  She is a regional bank manager for Sonoma National Bank and does the world a lot of good, spending most of her free time doing volunteer work for the Exchange Club, which focuses on child abuse prevention.  Kirk’s father, Guy Rector resides in Reno, NV and is spending his retirement breathing the fresh mountain air. He is currently riding a Harley , somewhere on the globe, with his brother and sister in law.  Kirk has two sisters, Kim and Kara.  Kirk is the middle child.  Kim is married to Jack McClaran and they have two children, Kaitlyn and Ryan.  Kara is married to Chris Stewart and they have two children, Justin and Genevieve. 

Kirk had the good fortune of growing up on a street with many other boys of similar age and a wonderful park nearby, so he spent most of his childhood playing football, baseball, soccer, swimming, and riding bikes.  He attended Santa Rosa High School where he graduated in 1988. He initially entered college as an English major intending to be a writer, English professor or attorney.  After being somewhat unsatisfied with that coursework, he accidentally took a chemistry class and found his true calling. He also worked part or full time most of his college years, as a buyer at Fair, Isaac & Co. After a summer research experience at University of Utah, in Salt Lake City, he graduated with a B.S. in Chemistry and a minor in English from Sonoma State University.

After a short three-week break, he began his graduate career at Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA in Physical Chemistry. This experience exposed him to world-class scientists and enabled him to travel around to several conferences in the States, Japan and Sicily. He lectured and presented scientific posters about his graduate work and results. After 5 ½ long years in a dark laser lab, he emerged with a Ph.D. in 1999.  An opportunity for a postdoctoral research position in the Bioscience division at Los Alamos National Laboratory drew him to Los Alamos, New Mexico. He was recipient of the Frederick Reines Fellowship from 2000-2003 and was promoted to technical staff member in 2003.  He has since relocated to the Chemistry Division in 2005. Kirk intended on staying in Los Alamos for only his two year post-doc position and is still here today. This is something Maria had a little bit of responsibility for.  Kirk and Maria met in July of 2002 and he was actively searching for a permanent job across the country during their first few months of dating. This really stressed Maria out. Kirk and Maria bought a house in Santa Cruz, NM, where they have lived since 2003.

Kirk's english background has come in handy, as he has published more than +25 publications and had his most current publication showcased on the cover of the journal. Currently his research focuses on creating movies and pictures through various microscopes. By looking at materials microscopically—from biological cells to polymer materials to geological samples—we can try to better understand how they influence and are influenced by their surroundings.  Understanding these interactions will help us to better control them for mankind’s benefit—by curing disease, making new properties, or new environmental cleanup techniques. Kirk is a team leader of one of the research teams in the Physical Chemistry group of LANL's Chemistry Division. In addition, Kirk is principal investigator on a multi-million dollar/yr classified project doing materials analysis for the US government. Kirk currently holds a SCI top secret clearance.

Kirk spends most of his free time with Maria and his daughter Leah,born March 23, 2008 . He also enjoys reading, working on their house, eating out in all the wonderful Santa Fe restaurants, and playing with their dog, Sydney. We also enjoy driving all over New Mexico, visiting National Parks. A tradition we started on our first honeymoon to Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico. We also try to visit National parks in any area we travel in the United States. Every spring and summer, he plays softball in the Los Alamos League. In the winter, he plays Racquetball in Pojoaque.

Our Engagement

Kirk surprised me good! He kept putting me off and saying that he wasn't ready for this kind of committment. His actions and our level of committment told me otherwise so I was quite confused. On top of that I was very ready to be engaged and felt good about that.

We were in Northern California at Christmas time 2003. When we go visit we usually go for three weeks to make up for the time away from Kirk's family. I wanted Kirk to take me to the ballet in San Francisco and he pretended that he forgot about it. I was bummed and so he told me he would take me on a romantic picnic sometime while we were there. He pretended he had to go shopping for my last Christmas gift and went into the San Francisco to pick up my ring at the Union Square Tiffanys. He got home from this trip, fuming that he had gotten bad intel from his Mom and sisters and that the gift he had wanted was not available. So I was none the wiser and thought more about it. He had the ring hanging out under his car seat of the 4Runner for the next six days. Christmas came and went and it was wonderful.

Then on December 30 he told me we were going on the picnic the next day. He got up early and prepared for the picnic. We took off and he told me that we were going to picnic at the Palace of the Fine Arts in San Francisco. This is a special place for Kirk, he fondly remembers being taken to the Exploratorium and park by his Grandma alongside all his cousins. I was excited, I had always admired the beautiful grounds as we were speeding past them on the highway on past trips to the city.

It was an overcast day but not too cold. Kirk gave me fourteen roses and I was thrilled. Fourteen means nothing in particular, the lady that prepped them was very excited when Kirk told her their purpose and probably snuck them in. That was enough for me. I had no idea my life was about to change drastically. We had turkey & avocado sandwiches and sat on a park bench watching the swans swim in the lake. It was great and I was so relaxed and peaceful. Then he handed me a tupperware container full of "dessert" and I opened it and quickly closed it. I was speechless and so surprised, I was glad I was sitting. There inside was my little blue box waiting for my answer of yes. I had to compose myself and listen to Kirk as he asked me to be his wife.

After that we toasted with champagne, took lots of pictures, ran into my sisters high school classmate (weird ramdom occurence), and toured The Exploratorium. That night we rang in the new year with some dear friends and a much heightened sense of joy and celebration.