Mike Kelley

It took awhile for me to miss it but I've been poking around in the net trying to find anyone from Los Alamos High and the class of 87. Finally I stumbled across it 20 years later.

So ... who am I? Most of the bios I've read are starting after graduation in 87 but I feel the need to start mine a little before that because I started falling off the face of the earth way before that as many of you knew. By high school I was the definition of a partier. Growing up with only an alcoholic father who was living at the American Legion I easily fell into a life of doing whatever I wanted ... no guidance, no rules (except "Don't get arrested and Use a Condom") helped that kind of lifestyle. By our senior year I was hanging out with anyone but those of our age group ... I was partying with my older step brother and with the kids a few years younger than myself. Some of my best friends (whom I notice also are not included in this alumni list) got sent to treatment and moved away. ... well to summarize by our senior year I knew it all ... I was living on my own paying my own bills and who needs high school anyway? I dropped out our final semester and "enjoyed" a 6 month summer ... at which time my room mate tried to kill himself and I ended up moving back home and finishing high school. I finished school quietly (barely) and on my 19th birthday got my diploma and absolutely no recognition of my graduation or my birthday from anyone in my family.

"Time to get the hell away from this place" ... was all I knew ... no plans, no path, nothing but an urgent need to get away from Los Alamos ... I jumped into my car and drove to Las Cruces where I had an older sister who let me live with her.

Many of us got to college and went wild from the new found freedom (Carlos)... for me it was just the same old thing ... party party party. 5 years disappeared into the blur of those parties. I worked and I partied, eventually I saw this amazingly beautiful girl at one of my many jobs and I was lucky enough to have enough of a personality to convince her to go out on a date with me.Slowly over time break up after make up after break up we got engaged and I moved to her home town of Farmington NM to get "away" from the parties in Las Cruces. Leslie and I enjoyed a quieter life in Farmington and I got to meet her family and had a chance to see what a real family was about. After some time in Farmington we got married and eventually came back to Las Cruces ... and I was back into partying ... heck I was a bartender at one of the college hot spots so I lived nights of parties ...Well soon life had continued to pass by and Leslie and I had been married 2 years when our first Daughter was born Ashley Ann Kelley came into the world (11/96) and I realized bartending wasn't going to cut it (it was enough to help me start to pay for our first house but not enough to raise a family) so I finally started going to NMSU.

Partying, working, raising a kid, going to school ... its not easy ... and I crashed ... crashed hard ... I managed to keep the house, the wife and, have a son (Noah Michael 08/98) but I was in a death spiral ... by 1999 I hit rock bottom. One day at a time I had to get sober and acknowledge I was my fathers son.

By December 1999 I had a few months without a drink and I was able to finish my undergrad. I graduated with a Bachelors of Business Administration with a focus on Business Computer Systems. I ended up working for NMSU as a programmer. During this time our 3rd child came along (Ireland Rose 02/01) and I continued my education at NMSU (how else could I keep those student loans from coming due??)

While studying for my MBA I made some friends in the MBA program and we helped each other through the program ... being sober I was able to get through the MBA with a 4.0 (I wonder what would have happened to me if I had stayed sober as a kid and graduated from Los Alamos with a 4.0???) One of those friends happened to be a CFO at a local trucking company here in Las Cruces. They needed an IT guy and I needed a job at a non governmental institution. When I started Mesilla Valley Transportation was a little trucking company (300 trucks, 3 locations) but over the last five years it has grown 3 fold and become one of the 50 largest transportaion companies in the US. As MVT has grown so have I. I went from a helpdesk guy helping people format their spreadsheets and resetting their passwords to the Director of IT for that company and the four other companies that they bought along the way. Leslie and I also had our fourth child during this time (Hannah Nicole 12/04).

My life now is family, work and computers. I've been sober 8 years and of that I am the proudest. As any of you that remember me and knew from back then I bet you are almost as surprised as I am that I'm sober, alive and not in jail.

I welcome any and all contact and look forward to seeing you all and letting our kids play together.

Mike Kelley