LAS CRUCES — While at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, New Mexico State University alumnus, Richard Leza, was able to slow down and write his memoir. The book details his life growing up in rural Hatch, surviving cancer, facing discrimination and gaining success in California’s Silicon Valley through his venture capital firm. Leza was born in Laredo, Texas, but his family moved to Placitas, a colonia of Hatch, when he was very young. He was the fourth of ten children. His summers were spent in the fields picking cotton, chile, onions and other crops grown in the Valley. “It was kind of a very stressing experience for me because it was not the best environment in the world and I grew up not knowing anything beyond a, let's say, 80-mile radius. I think the furthest I'd been was maybe once or twice to El Paso, Texas,” Leza said. “I went to see my brother in Los Angeles before graduating high school, and I saw what a different world it was out there, versus (where) I had grown up.”