A Story of Redemption
Joey Lopez and his family share a true passion for Thoroughbreds despite some trying setbacks.
By Denis Blake
As any breeder, owner or trainer will tell you, horse racing can provide the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. And it’s not just about the money, as you’ll often see horsemen beaming with pride when their scrappy runner puts in a game effort even when they don’t end up in the winner’s circle. Of course, winning a race is an unbeatable feeling, with the flip side being complete devastation when a breeder has a stillborn foal or sees a horse get injured. If you’ve been in racing long enough, you’ve probably thought it was the greatest endeavor ever at one point, only to later experience a heartbreak that makes you question whether you should give it up. Such is the case with breeder and owner Joey Lopez and his family. But after a series of gut punches that nearly knocked them out of the business, they have once again fallen in love with Louisiana-bred Thoroughbreds.
Lopez is the personification of a “small-time” horseman. Family-run farms offer strength in numbers that make them every bit as important as the sprawling, commercial breeding operations in Louisiana and across the country. Lopez and his family do not count their success only in terms of wins and earnings, though of course they strive for both. Rather, Lopez and his wife, Gloria, enjoy sharing their passion for horses with the next two generations. And in turn, Joey’s daughter, Kaela McGhee, and her two sons, Mason and Kolt, wouldn’t trade anything for their shared equine experience.
But it did take some coaxing from Val Murrell, longtime general manager of Clear Creek Stud, to convince the family to stay in the game after multiple cruel twists of fate.
The story of the family’s involvement in racing started like many others, through claiming a horse.
“Me and one of my buddies (Mark Broussard), we used to go to the races, and we wanted to claim one,” said Lopez about getting into racing in the late 1990s. “So we claimed one for $10,000. We each put up $2,500, and we borrowed $5,000.”
Lopez had some fun and a fair amount of success with claimers and later expanded into breeding on an eight-acre farm located south of Lafayette.
“We have six, one-acre pastures with some stalls and little barns,” said Lopez. “We do a little bit of everything. We run some, breed some and sell some, and we board a few.
“My wife works hard with me, and she’ll get up in the morning before work and feed the horses, and my daughter works hard at it, and now my grandson, Mason.”
Lopez is retired, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t work.
“I retired at 61, and I’m 65 right now and my wife works and my daughter works, so it’s mostly a side thing, but we love it. We love the horses, and we do it for the passion. I might be retired, but there’s no holidays or sick days with horses.”
Lopez is quick to credit his family for helping on the farm, especially Kaela. She inherited her father’s passion for horses, and that was passed down to the next generation in her sons.
“As a kid, my dad had some horses and then I got big into softball, and it was hard to keep up with horses and work and with me playing high school and travel ball,” Kaela said about a lull in her father’s Thoroughbred involvement. “And then fast forward a few years, my stepmom and him got married, and we started going back to the races.”
Soon after, going to the races turned into breeding a racehorse.
“My dad’s friend Mr. Mark (Broussard) found a mare named All Time and said, ‘Hey, let’s buy this mare and go in half and run the babies,’” said Kaela.
Unfortunately, the breeding operation got off to a rough start when All Time, a daughter of Seattle Sleet who won 15 mostly claiming races on the track, delivered a stillborn filly. She was then bred to top Louisiana stallion Half Ours and delivered All Our Time, a now 9-year-old gelding who the family affectionally calls “Bubba Horse.” He earned that nickname from Mason, who was born two years earlier.
Best friends Mason McGhee and “Bubba Horse”
“He and my son grew up together,” said Kaela. “They are best friends.”
Luck always seems to play a role when it comes to horses, whether it’s raising them or racing them, but it was in short supply for All Our Time early in his life.
“Bubba Horse has been through the ringer,” said Kaela. “When he was a yearling, he had cellulitis in one of his legs, and then Tropical Storm Barry flipped his stall over, and he ran out of the back of it and stepped on something and cut his leg to the joint. At that time, I had just given birth to my son Kolt, and he was just a week old. I couldn’t get to the farm, but my dad drove him to Opelousas and then ended up bringing him to Clear Creek, and they saved his leg.”
That was not the end of the bad luck for Bubba Horse.
“Then later he was playing with an alfalfa tub in the pasture, and he somehow flipped it up and it hit himself on the back of his right ear and fractured a bone in his skull, so we nursed him back to health again,” Kaela said, proving again that horses know no bounds in the ways to injure themselves.
“Mr. Val called my dad and said, ‘Hey, y’all are not getting out that easy. I’ll give you a mare, or why don’t you go to Keeneland and buy a mare.’”
“In the meantime, All Time had a colt by Star Guitar who lived on the side of Bubba Horse,” she continued. “The colt stuck his leg through the fence at six months old and broke his knee, and we had to put him down. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my dad cry before that. I still have the mental picture of him sitting in the pasture after the vet at LSU called him and said that they had to put him down.”
If there were ever a time to give up on breeding Thoroughbreds, that was probably the time.
“We had a filly born dead, we lost the Star Guitar colt and Bubba Horse hadn’t gotten to the track yet,” said Kaela. “We both decided we didn’t want to do it anymore because our hearts were too much in it. We love them more than the price tag on them.”
But Joey and Kaela decided to persevere, thanks to a nudge from Murrell.
“Mr. Val called my dad and said, ‘Hey, y’all are not getting out that easy. I’ll give you a mare, or why don’t you go to Keeneland and buy a mare. So my dad and I and my stepmom drove 12 hours and spent a few days in Kentucky.”
It’s not easy to find a quality mare at the Keeneland sale on a budget, but they did uncover a proverbial diamond in the rough. The family picked up Shes Into Mischief, a stakes-placed daughter of Into Mischief in foal to Not This Time, for $20,000.
The mare certainly had the pedigree to be successful, and it turns out she also has the temperament to be a perfect fit in the family’s breeding program.
“When she got home here, it was like she just belonged,” said Kaela about bringing the mare to Louisiana in early 2020. “She is the best mare. She loves my youngest son, Kolt. I feel like she thinks that he’s her kid. Kolt’s been around her since he was one. When I’m cleaning stalls and she’s eating, she’ll look to see where he’s at. He wouldn’t do it, but he could pull on her tail, and she’d just be like, ‘Dude, what are you doing?’”
The foal that Shes Into Mischief was carrying at the sale ended up being Louisiana-bred Star Redemption with Kaela McGhee and Joey Lopez as the breeders. While some might give their foal a whimsical or catchy name, this one had a lot of meaning behind it.
“I ended up naming him Star Redemption,” said Kaela. “‘Star’ because of the Star Guitar six-month-old that we put down, and ‘Redemption’ because he was our redemption from all the bad stuff with Bubba Horse. He was our redemption.”
Consigned by Clear Creek Stud for Joey and Kaela to the 2021 Texas Summer Yearling Sale, the then colt and now gelding sold for $120,000 to Al and Bill Ulwelling as the second-highest price of the entire auction.
“I cried like a big baby,” recalled Kaela. “That was the first one I ever raised and sold. And he was also special. He was our comeback kid. It was tears of excitement, tears of accomplishment and a little bit tears of sadness, but I stayed engaged with him throughout his whole racing career.”
Star Redemption accomplished more than most on the track, even if he wasn’t a stakes runner. The Louisiana-bred broke his maiden in a $57,100 special weight race at Woodbine in Canada and then won a $53,000 allowance sprint back in his home state at Fair Grounds.
Then the story came full circle.
“I ended up claiming him toward the end of the Fair Grounds meet (in 2024), and we tried to run him back, but he just got sour on racing and didn’t want to do it anymore,” she said.
Kaela made sure he went to a good home, and now the 6-year-old is living with a family in Wisconsin. He might be a thousand miles away, but Star Redemption is still close to Kaela’s heart, and she keeps in touch with the family to get updates and photos.
Star Redemption wasn’t the only redeeming horse for the family, as Bubba Horse, remarkably, made it to the races despite his previous injuries. He did not debut until his 4-year-old season, but he made up for lost time by posting two wins, a second and a third over his four starts while earning nearly $60,000 that year.
Alll Our Time aka “Bubba Horse” finds the winners circle at last.
When he tailed off as a 5-year-old, he went back to where he was raised.
“He’s a pasture ornament at my dad’s, and he’ll never go anywhere,” said Kaela. “He’s the babysitter for the other horses now.”
The family’s only runner on the track right now is the 4-year-old gelding Bayou Time, a full brother to All Our Time. The Keith Bourgeois trainee has yet to find the winner’s circle but has hit the board four straight times against maiden company at Fair Grounds and Evangeline Downs. Bayou Time has earned the nickname Little Bubba from Mason. And Mason’s younger brother, Kolt, has a special relationship with Shes Into Mischief, aka Momma Horse. The family also is in a partnership on another broodmare in Smittys Baracuda, who is a daughter of Half Ours out of the great Louisiana-bred turf sprinter Smitty’s Sunshine.
As if a job, the horses at the farm and her two sons don’t keep her busy enough, Kaela also helps out Clear Creek at the sales.
“We’ve made great friends with Michelle and Trey (LaVoice) and Mr. Val and Jerold (Murrell), and we have learned so much from them,” she said.
The horses certainly keep all members of the family busy, but they wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I love it,” said Kaela. “I love every minute of it.”
“We’ve got a bad habit,” said Joey with a laugh about the horses. “We spoil them and fall in love with them.”