Gloria Rivera, fourth from left, stands with the current Imperial Irrigation District Board of Directors and management staff as she is inducted into IID’s Gallery of Distinguished Employees on Nov. 21. Rivera, who retired in 2019, worked 47 years for IID, as an executive assistant to the general manager and Board secretary.

When Gloria River was a 10-year-old girl growing up in the Mexican border city of Mexicali, her mother told her they would be moving across the border to the Imperial Valley where her father worked on a ranch.

Rivera cried at the news. She didn’t want to leave her friends to start a new life in the United States, but what that child didn’t know was the positive path her life would take, and the sense of fulfillment it would bring her.

Eventually, at the age of 19, Rivera would join the Imperial Irrigation District

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Jack Vessey, president of Vessey & Co., is pictured in one of his kale fields near Holtville. Vessey represents the fourth generation of his family farming operation, which this year is celebrating its centennial in the Imperial Valley. Photo courtesy of Vessey & Co.

When Jack Vessey was a teen growing up in the Holtville area, watching his father run the family’s generational farm, he knew what he wanted to do – become a farmer like his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather.

There were times when his father, the late Jon Vessey, would tell him that he could choose any career he wanted, and that the only reason to become a farmer would be if he truly had a passion for it. The elder Vessey told his son becoming a farmer would not be an easy path.

For Jack, there was never a question. He was going to be

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Pioneers’ Museum Director Caitlin Chávez is pictured by a statue of Mobley Meadows, the first sheriff of Imperial County, in front of the museum. Chávez began her tenure as the museum’s director in January.

Standing in the center of a great hall within the Imperial Valley’s Pioneers’ Museum, one is surrounded by a massive historic pipe organ from 1904, a gallery that celebrates the region’s cattle industry, and another that celebrates the history of the Imperial Irrigation District and the work of pioneers to bring the waters of the Colorado River to the Valley.

All of it tells the story of the Imperial Valley, and it’s a story that Caitlin Chávez, who has served as the museum’s director since January, wants to share in a way that brings this history to life and reminds anyone who visits the museum just how incredible this history is.

“It’s a turn-of-the-century,

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