Deborah Hoonan and Lisa Trujillo were in high school when they met in the mid-'80s. Hoonan attended Puyallup's Rogers High, where her father, Pat, was head football coach and athletic director, while Lisa went to Clover Park in Lakewood. The pair had a fair amount in common: Both lived in and attended school in suburban Pierce County, both liked horses and punk rock, and Trujillo's grandparents lived next door to close friends of the Hoonan family. Both were interested in becoming jockeys at Longacres after graduation, a goal Hoonan was able to realize rather quickly (her mother is a cousin of the Bazes, easily the most accomplished family in the history of Northwest thoroughbred racing). Trujillo went on to become a college writing instructor, and the two would not see each other for another 20 years.
Kevin P. Casey
Hoonan-Trujillo (aboard horse #3)
is the second-winningest female jockey in Emerald Downs History.
Kevin P. Casey
Hoonan-Trujillo (left) is greeted by her wife, Lisa, after riding in last Thursday’s third race.
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Hoonan was a jockey at Longacres from 1987 until the track closed in 1992. While she exercised horses—keeping them sharp between races through comparatively leisurely jaunts around the oval—for trainers up and down the West Coast for the next 12 years, she would not ride competitively again until 2004, when she resurfaced at Emerald Downs. During her hiatus, she succumbed to, and ultimately kicked, a substantial drinking habit, which contributed to her being too heavy to race.
"I couldn't tell people who I really was," explains Hoonan. "[I was] wanting to be numb."
Newly sober, Hoonan tracked down Trujillo on classmates.com and invited her to the 2004 meet's final day of racing. Trujillo accepted. It was love at second sight.
"We haven't been apart since," says Hoonan, who officially changed her name to Hoonan-Trujillo after the pair got hitched at Vancouver, B.C.'s Stanley Park in September 2006. Those close to her credit the union with helping Hoonan-Trujillo overcome her demons and reach a new plateau, personally and professionally.
"It's one of the best things that's ever happened to Debbie," says Hoonan-Trujillo's baby sister, Katie Henry. "It's given her confidence—that sturdy, committed relationship she knows she has, and the support [Lisa] gives her. Her emotional life is so much more under control; it helps her focus on everything else."
Granted, a pair of lesbians traveling to Canada to get married is not so unusual nowadays. But a jockey being openly gay certainly is.
"There may have been one or two [gay jockeys] back in the day at Longacres, but I don't think it was spoken of," says Jennifer Whitaker, a straight woman who is Emerald Downs' all-time winningest female jockey (Hoonan-Trujillo ranks second). "So in that sense, it's pretty much unheard of."
"It's not that there aren't any [gay jockeys]; I just don't know of any," says William Nack, a celebrated horse-racing scribe who wrote the definitive book on the superhorse Secretariat and narrated the editorial segments which preceded ABC's recent Belmont Stakes telecast. "The subject never comes up."
That's especially true among male jockeys, who outnumber women by a ratio of roughly 10-1. "I honestly feel that a guy [coming out] would be totally different," says jockey Ricky Frazier, Emerald Downs' leading rider. He concedes that there may be "gay [male] riders out there," but doesn't know of any himself.
Though associated with a sport that's long adhered to country-music values, the regulars at Emerald Downs seem to have embraced the Hoonan-Trujillos' status as a couple without breaking stride. Says track announcer Robert Geller: "For Debbie and Lisa's anniversary, we put it up on the board like we would with anyone else, and no one even blinked. We're at a track and in a state where people are far more accepting of difference."
Geller, a native Australian, is gay as well. "Debbie and I have a bond probably because of that," he says. "A lot of people are not out, but she's very comfortable with her sexuality, and so am I. For Debbie, her relationship with Lisa is a very big part of her life. They're so close and so bonded. They're a breath of fresh air, because a lot of people, gay or straight, have struggled with marriage, relationships, and even themselves. And they're very inspirational. Debbie's mom and dad just adore Debbie, and Lisa is embraced by them as well. [Lisa] also puts [Debbie's] racing world in perspective; she can handle the ups and downs of this industry. A lot of people can't."
But will improved perspective and reduced off-track tumult translate into Hoonan-Trujillo climbing the jockey standings at Emerald Downs? Midway through the 2009 meet, the prognosis is murky.
This past winter at Portland Meadows, Hoonan-Trujillo captured the meet's overall riding title with 89 wins, an elite milestone among jockeys of either gender and an especially lofty one among female riders, who compete on an equal footing with their male colleagues. But in spite of her success down south, Hoonan-Trujillo has remained mired in the middle of the jockey standings at Emerald, widely considered to be a cut above the Portland track. In Auburn, Hoonan-Trujillo is not only not the best jockey, she's not even the best female jockey (she ranks third behind Cassie Papineau and Whitaker). But the meet is young—it runs April through September—and Hoonan-Trujillo isn't the anxious type.
