Below is my article from another publication, CU Stampede.

SPREADING THE LOVE
Combining two passions works for donor Heidi Rothberg
By Marty Coffin Evans (2013)

Heidi Rothberg (Arts and Sciences, ’72) has a strong affinity for the four-legged. Count among her favorites Ralphie, Yoda, Xumbo Dos Diamantes, Honey, Vulcan, Paris and Stella.

Heidi on Her Horse

Ralphie is the only non-resident on her mountain ranch in Allenspark, Colo.

Five days a week, Rothberg can be found working three of her horses with her dog, Yoda, patiently watching. “This is my art,” she says of this full-time passion. She’s learned how to combine it with her love for CU, especially her football scholarship students. Her personal relationship with these student-athletes started in 1996.

Roman Hollowell was her first football scholarship player followed by Brian lwuh, Thaddeus Washington, and Brian Lockridge. This year, she’s been paired up with Austin Ray.

‘At the senior banquet when I was congratulating Brian lwuh, Thaddeus asked if I could be his donor,” Rothberg remembers. Her answer was yes and another relationship began.

Rothberg reasons she wants to give student-athletes a leg up. She enjoys knowing the person behind the player and watching him mature year after year. Her connections typically include meeting the player’s parents, most commonly their mother.

This loyal CU donor enjoys modeling her own giving spirit and is delighted when a player follows in her footsteps. Brian lwuh did just that when he started a “Fun in the Park” program for children in Houston. Rothberg is also very proud that Lockridge was honored last year as one of 11 players throughout the country for his charitable work. Locally, that involved playing the piano at Boulder Community Hospital and teaching children to read.

She believes in the importance of leaving her own corner of the world in better shape than how it was found. To her it’s “Tikkun Olam” – or translated from Hebrew, to repair the world. This becomes more spiritual than financial for Rothberg, although both matter.

Rothberg’s interest in horses goes back decades from an early involvement in jumping to her current dressage focus. When living in Costa Rica at one point after graduation, she saw the renowned dressage instructor Nuno Oliveira in action.

“That’s what I want to do,” she remembers thinking, and subsequently spent two weeks in 1983 under “Mr. O’s” tutelage in Portugal. While she enjoys watching football and basketball competitions, both of which she regularly attends, dressage is different. For Rothberg, ribbons and medals don’t matter as much as the process of training and retraining her horses. Most of them are Lusitanos, with the exception of Honey, the Mustang.

“When you find the connection with the horse, it feels so unique,” she explains.