Over the years, Paul Ortega owned a Mexican restaurant, peddled chiles, sold burritos from a truck and worked as a meatpacker.
Ortega, owner of Rosita’s Restaurant, died Aug. 15 at the home he had lived in for years. He was 78.
He also taught his daughters to box, kept a huge family together by organizing annual camping trips for dozens of relatives, loved to gamble and often gave away meals to the hungry.
Ortega ran Rosita’s for decades. First located on West Colfax Avenue, it has been at West 81st Avenue and Federal Boulevard in Westminster for several years and now is run by his daughter Pauline “Pie” Gallegos, and her husband, Chris Gallegos.
When income wasn’t good, Paul Ortega got other jobs: peddling, landscaping or meatpacking.
But other times, restaurant business boomed. At one point, he could hardly keep up with the crowds and told his children, “Tell those nuns to stop praying for us.”
An amateur boxer, Ortega reared his first three children, all daughters, “like men,” Pauline Gallegos said.
He taught them to box so they could take care of themselves. It worked. When daughter Rosie Agurries was a young girl, a boy in the neighborhood was flirting with her and she didn’t like it.
“I flipped him over my shoulder, and he never bothered me again,” she said.
Their boxing days ended when Gallegos slugged Agurries.
“I landed in the (backyard) swimming pool and almost drowned,” Agurries said, now laughing about the incident.
All the Ortega kids worked in the restaurant, learning to cook, clean and bus tables.
“We were so used to cooking in huge kettles that when we got married we didn’t know how to cook for two,” said Agurries.
Paul Ortega was born in Belen, N.M., on Sept. 5, 1928, and moved to Denver with his parents when he was a child.
He finished the eighth grade and then worked for his dad, Nicholas Ortega, in the family’s west Denver grocery store.
He married Margaret Sanchez in 1954.
Paul Ortega loved to play poker, and among the flowers at his funeral were two oversized dice and playing cards showing a royal flush. They were placed there by his family.
In addition to his wife and daughters, Paul Ortega is survived by another daughter, Vicky Ortega, and a son, George Ortega, both of Westminster; a stepdaughter, Della Burrows of Castle Rock; a stepson, Alex Madrid of Phoenix; 13 grandchildren; and 10 great-grandchildren.
Staff writer Virginia Culver can be reached at 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com.
