Honor riders remember Lori Piestewa: Annual motorcycle run honors Native service members, Gold Star families

By Donovan Quintero
Special to the Times

WINDOW ROCK – Surround yourself with people who still care, who still give a damn.

Those words resounded with ex-POW Joseph Hudson, from El Paso, Texas, during his ride to the 21st Annual Lori Piestewa Navajo Hopi Honor Ride. Hudson and Piestewa were POWs for 22 days in March 2003.

“The healing after the incident in 2003, there was a couple of years that were real dark for me. I finally started letting people into my life,” Hudson said on Sunday at the Navajo Nation Veterans Memorial Park.

Hudson, Piestewa, and other members of the 507th Maintenance Company were caught in an ambush at Nasiriyah during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

After nearly two hours of fighting with Iraqi forces, Hudson and Piestewa, along with five other U.S. soldiers, were captured. Overall, 11 soldiers were killed.

The ex-POW said Lori’s family and their treatment of him like a son were essential to his healing.

“Surrounding yourself with people who still care people, still give a damn, it’s all about healing and taking care of each other,” Hudson said.

The four-day ride began in Window Rock, making stops in several communities to honor fallen Navajo warriors and their Gold Star families.

Honoring Lori, Gold Star mothers

For Gold Star mothers, the brief visit was just enough to take away the grief that never goes away briefly, said Bobby Martin, the founder of the Navajo Nation Hopi Honor Riders.

Martin was celebrating his birthday when his wife beckoned him to come to the TV. His 33rd birthday went from a celebration to one of tortuous pain, which has since inspired him to do his best to honor his cousin-sister for the last 21 years.

Coming from a very close-knit family, he knew he had to see his aunt and uncle in Tuba City, where they were living at the time. So, he and a few of his friends decided to ride to Tuba City. At the time, the ride intended to let Lori’s parents—Percy Piestewa and the late Terry Piestewa—know they were not alone.

Twenty-one years ago, Martin rode to Tuba City and remembered one of his last cherished moments: Lori surprising him with a hug at the Western Navajo Fair.

“Me and my family were out there eating at a restaurant, and we were getting ready to go to the carnival,” Martin remembered in 2022. “We were sitting there, and these arms came up behind me and gave me a really big hug. She said, ‘Hey, cousin, how are you doing?’ And I turned, and it was Lori.”

‘You need other people’, healing

Bobby Martin says riding to honor fallen warriors has taught him that caring was the best medicine families needed.

“I’ve learned, especially as a Gold Star family, that you need other people, you need others’ support. We want to make sure that these families know they are not alone,” he said on Sunday.

Navajo Nation Hopi Honor Rider member Geri Hongeva-Camarillo agrees with Martin and Hudson.

During a ride in 2021 to honor the Navajo Code Talkers, Hongeva-Camarillo said she lost the flag in Jamestown, New Mexico, east of Gallup.

The loss of the flag devastated her, but little did she know it would turn into a miraculous healing journey for a truck driver from Lebanon, Missouri, who found it, she said.

“It was found by truck driver Andy Cruz. Cruz picked it up and took it all the way back home with him to Missouri,” Hongeva-Camarillo said.

Cruz found her contact information inside the box that held the flag and called her to tell her he had the flag.

“When Andy called and said, ‘I have the flag,’ it was a big relief,” Hongeva-Camarillo remembered on Friday in Page, Arizona. “We went out there and picked it up in Missouri.”

When she and another rider arrived at his home, she said Cruz had prepared a welcome cookout for a large entourage of NNHR riders. When she walked into his house, she saw the Code Talker flag draped over a horse saddle that once belonged to Andy’s son, a veteran who committed suicide.

That’s when she heard Andy’s story of his son.

“When I heard his story that his son had committed suicide, he was so heartfelt, he was crying. I cried, too,” she said. “Andy told me that he, the father, was actually thinking of committing suicide when he lost his son. And when he found the flag, he found hope. He found a big strength in it, but he didn’t know why. He was saying, ‘You guys saved my life. I found this flag. There’s hope. There’s faith.’ We’re good friends today. We see him every June. We’ll be riding to go see him in Missouri here next month.”

Riding for Mission 22

Geri Hongeva-Camarillo said she rode to Idaho last month as part of Mission 22, which is an organization that seeks to increase awareness about the number of military veterans who, according to the organization, 22 combat veterans commit suicide every day.

“I just were in Idaho last month for the ride for Mission 22, which is they help veterans who are either coming out of service or dealing with PTSD. They help them directly as they come home,” Hongeva-Camarillo said. “Mission 22 helps veterans try to gain their bearings back into a civilian life, which we don’t know what to do as family. We want to help, but we don’t know how to communicate with affection when they come home.

“We found out that most veterans don’t go directly to a parent, family, loved one, or a spouse,” she continued. “They actually are more open to somebody else who’s not in the immediate circle of family or friends. They’d rather turn to somebody more outside or distant,” Hongeva-Camarillo added. “So, we’re learning a little bit more about it.”

Hudson said it took him years to overcome the dark times that befell him in 2003.

“The first step of acceptance is that something terrible has happened to you. How do you learn from your experience? How do you push forward? It’s hard to do that on your own. And that’s where you need support channel,” Hudson said. “So, after you become healed, you provide healing to others also, so not only are you healing yourself, you’re healing the people around you. And it just it just it’s a gift that keeps giving. Healing is a gift that keeps giving.”

For Bobby Martin, the journey on the healing path will never end.

“For us with Lori, it’s been twenty-one years and there’s not a single day that goes by I don’t wish that she were here. I miss her all the time. Her mom misses her, we miss her dad, and all these other families are like that,” he said.

The honor ride made more than 15 stops throughout the Navajo Nation, honoring Gold Star families and remembering their fallen warriors.

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