Teen cowboys from New Mexico remembered as remarkable

It was Michael Hillman's first professional rodeo win, and the first professional rodeo for his friend, Jesse Andrus.

Andrus and Hillman recently turned 18 and were following dreams of joining the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association when they came to Arizona last weekend.

They'd driven a white Dodge pickup truck with a camper shell from their home in Roswell, N.M., to Cave Creek to compete in Saturday's Fiesta Days Rodeo.

They never made it back.

After the competition, where Hillman took first place in saddle bronc, the young men told a rodeo official they planned to leave Arizona early Sunday morning, because they wanted to be home in time for classes on Monday. Both were seniors at Goddard High School.

Word spread quickly Monday that the young cowboys were missing. By 10:30 a.m., Roswell police contacted Scottsdale police to help find them.

Officers used a cellphone's GPS and found Andrus and Hillman dead in a north Scottsdale Safeway parking lot later that morning. Investigators suspect the men died of accidental carbon-monoxide poisoning. The generator on the rear of the vehicle may have been running, Scottsdale police said.

Adults who knew Hillman always joked "that when we grew up, we wanted to be like Mike," said Riley Henson, saddle bronc director for the New Mexico High School Rodeo Association.

There has been an outpouring of support from the rodeo community, Henson said. High-school rodeo officials considered canceling a rodeo in Belen, N.M., this weekend, but opted to keep it scheduled.

"The rodeo family needs to be together to continue to honor them and their family," he said. "They were remarkable young men. They were born leaders. There's plenty of 18-year-olds that you wouldn't send across to the street to get milk by themselves. They were the complete opposite. We didn't worry about them being off this far."

Henson described Hillman's meteoric rise through the rodeo ranks. "It was a gift," he said. "Same with Jesse. Both boys were both unbelievably talented in what they did," he said.

Tilt James came to know the young men through his work as the pastor with the high-school association. Andrus had passion for riding a bull, he said.

"He went after bull riding with a great intensity. I really liked that about that kid."

Hillman and Andrus always showed up for the prayer before the rodeo started and attended church services, James said.

"Rodeo-wise . . . they had a gift," he said. "But their greater gift was life. That surrounded them, everywhere they went. Our young athletes liked to be around them."