Rudy S. Apodaca was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He grew up on the east side of town, where most Chicanos lived and where his parents owned a grocery store. His father's family, who settled in Las Cruces in the nineteenth century, came from Socorro, Texas, a small town southeast of El Paso. There are at least five generations of Apodaca's family still living in Las Cruces. In 1957 Apodaca graduated from Las Cruces High School. He earned a B.S. in mathematics in 1961 from New Mexico State University and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 1964. He and his wife, Nancy, have three daughters and one son. Apodaca has been general counsel and bank attorney for Citizens Bank of Las Cruces, while maintaining a part-time law practice and overseeing his family's business ventures. In an unpublished interview granted in 1984, Apodaca commented: "growing up Hispanic in...