Kimberly Mata-Rubio at her home, in Uvalde. Photograph by Dan Winters
By Skip Hollandsworth, Texas Monthly, June 2023
Kimberly Mata-Rubio pulls her thick black hair into a ponytail, laces up her purple-and-black Brooks running shoes, and sets off on a three-mile loop through her hometown of Uvalde, at the edge of the Texas Hill Country, eighty miles west of San Antonio.
From her house, she heads west, then she makes a left and runs alongside the magnificent oak trees lining North Getty, one of Uvalde’s main streets. She runs past the softball fields where her ten-year-old daughter Alexandria “Lexi” Aniyah Rubio used to practice her hitting, past the two-story homes that Lexi used to dream of living in, past Julien’s, where Kim chose her dress for Lexi’s funeral. A few blocks away is First Baptist Church, where the funeral was held.
Just before she reaches the downtown plaza, Kim makes another left, on East Nopal Street, then makes a right and comes to a stop in front of a mural of her daughter, 20 feet tall and 23 feet wide, painted on the side of a brick building—one of 21 such murals spread throughout downtown depicting all the children and teachers who were slain in their classrooms at Robb Elementary School on the morning of May 24, 2022.
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