While I was on my way to a Turf Publicists of America meeting in Lexington, Ky., I received word that Carol Trimmer, former editor of the NRHA Reiner magazine, had passed. it was like someone punched me in the stomach out of the blue. In a time when I felt lost after completing my internship at AQHA, she reached out to me and offered me a job with the magazine and NRHA that put me on my path that has suited me and benefited me for more than 12 years now. I was at the cusp of possibly moving back to Indiana and sorting my life out, but at the last possible minute, she called me. I hadn’t even interviewed for the position–I had applied for a position to lead the Youth association.

In that year of living in Oklahoma City, she was like a mother to me. I wasn’t able to travel home much, except for Christmas, but she took me under her wing. To be honest, it was a frustrating year because I felt like I wasn’t learning anything and I wasn’t using my talents to their fullest. I didn’t realize that she was quietly molding me and quietly pushing me out of my comfort zone.

Carol is the National Reining Horse Association. She was the guidebook full of stats, facts and anything you needed. She knew every single person who ever swung a leg over a reining horse. She was the one everyone flocked to see in the media room at the Futurity and Derby just to get a hug, and she worried more about others than herself. She wholeheartedly deserved to be inducted into the NRHA Hall of Fame a few years back.