Trinidad native Trinie Rubidoux turns 100, shares century of memories

Trinie Rubidoux spent the first part of her century in Trinidad, and those roots still shape the story of her 100th birthday. The Trinidad native turned 100 on March 26, becoming the newest member of Pueblo’s centenarian club, a milestone that turned her life into a window on southern Colorado memory.

Rubidoux has lived in Pueblo for the past eight years, but her identity remains tied to Trinidad and the county where she grew up. The Pueblo Chieftain profiled her as a former homemaker and personal care advisor in a Q&A built around her secrets to a long and happy life, putting her own voice at the center of a story that is as much about family and habit as it is about age.

That local connection matters in Las Animas County, where Trinidad has long served as the county seat and where deep family ties often stretch across generations and town lines. Las Animas County was established in 1866, making it one of the oldest counties in Colorado. It is also the state’s largest county, covering 4,775 square miles in the southern end of Colorado east of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. For readers with family roots in Trinidad, a centenarian like Rubidoux carries a kind of living history that cannot be found in county records alone.

Her birthday also fits into a broader public-health reality: centenarians remain rare. The U.S. Census Bureau’s updated portrait of centenarians, based on the 2020 Census, tracks this small but growing population by age, sex, race, Hispanic origin, living arrangements and geography. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the number of Americans age 100 and over rose 43.6% from 50,281 in 2000 to 72,197 in 2014, showing how uncommon it still is to reach Rubidoux’s age.

The Chieftain has been spotlighting other centenarians this year, but Rubidoux’s profile stands out because it keeps Trinidad at the center of the story. She is not just Pueblo’s newest centenarian. She is also a reminder that the oldest residents of southern Colorado often carry the clearest memories of how the region was built, family by family, town by town.