Melinda Arquero’s dream of owning a food truck business came true in 2019. Spurred by childhood memories of selling frybread from a roadside tent alongside her mother, the Cochiti Pueblo native purchased a truck to maintain the Pueblo frybread tradition and honor the dream she shared with the mother she lost to cancer 10 years earlier. Her plan was to serve frybread to Cochiti Pueblo residents and visitors at tribal events.

And then the pandemic hit. Pueblo communities were placed on lockdown prohibiting visitors from entering tribal lands where they could pass the virus to Native Americans – a population that suffered virus deaths at one of the highest rates of any race or ethnicity. Arquero’s new Over The Moon food truck was forced to sit idle.

A Chance Meeting

Arquero, known by family and friends as Moon, learned about the nonprofit lender Rural Community Assistance Corporation (RCAC) by chance soon after pandemic health regulations loosened. She was invited to bring Over The Moon to a regional housing meeting at the Cochiti Housing Department. Hosted by RCAC, the meeting focused on RCAC housing and development programs, but conversations revealed RCAC’s work with rural small businesses. Subsequent conversations resulted in a loan and a relationship that has put the business on solid footing and given it more opportunities than Arquero originally envisioned.