HOBBS — Dinora Carrejo-Guthrie was taking college classes in the late 1970s when a fellow student fainted.
Her family didn’t have enough food for everyone to eat that day, the woman later told Carrejo-Guthrie. After she chose to feed her children instead of her husband, the woman said, her husband had beaten her.
The experience lit a fire in Carrejo-Guthrie, her son Robert Guthrie recalled. She realized there were few resources in Lea County for survivors of domestic violence.
He remembered his mother saying: “There ought to be an option. There ought to be a choice.”
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That’s how Option Inc., the Lea County-based domestic violence services organization, got its start in the late 1970s.
In the nearly 50 years since then, serving survivors of domestic violence has become something of a family tradition for the two Guthries. Carrejo-Guthrie worked as the organization’s executive director for more than four decades, until her death in 2021. Now her son heads the organization — and keeps her legacy alive.
“It’s the hardest job you’ll ever love,” Robert Guthrie said.
There is no typical shift while working at Option Inc., said organizational manager Melissa Burke, a longtime employee.
From its office in downtown Hobbs — a town of about 40,000 residents in the oil- and gas-rich Permian Basin — Option Inc. served more than 3,000 people in 2025, according to the organization’s data.
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On some days, Option Inc.’s seven-room shelter is full of families in need of emergency housing and ongoing support. On other days, clients arrive in need of restraining orders or emergency assistance with food and clothing.
“We do a little bit of everything — you have to, I think, when you work in a nonprofit, where your mission is to service your community,” Burke said. “As soon as the crisis happens, everybody has to be trained in everything.”
Burke described Carrejo-Guthrie as a “perfect storm”: She knew when to be delicate and when to be forceful, but her commitment to serving survivors of domestic violence in Lea County never wavered.
“She was fearless,” said Burke, whom Carrejo-Guthrie had hired on the spot in 2010.
Carrejo-Guthrie was no stranger to finding her own path for doing good.
When the family lived in Yuma, Ariz., she founded a daycare center for the children of migrant agricultural workers so they wouldn’t have to join their parents in the fields. When the Guthries lived in Portland, Ore., Carrejo-Guthrie — who had both Hispanic and Native American heritage — established a center for Indigenous youth.
“If she saw that she could get something good done, she did her own thing. She was a maverick,” her son said.
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Robert Guthrie, 70, hadn’t intended to follow in his mother’s footsteps. After one career as an accountant and another teaching at New Mexico Junior College, he retired. But when Option Inc.’s bookkeeper left, Carrejo-Guthrie persuaded him to help mind the accounts for a few months — a job he didn’t want.
He told his mother as much: “Mom, I don’t want to do this. Look at what it’s done to you: You’re a hardened person. You don’t trust people,” he recalled saying. “You help people, but it’s hardened your heart.”
Eventually, however, she convinced him, and he’s stayed for more than a decade.
“Mom brought me in kicking and screaming. … But now, I can’t imagine my life — 13 years later — not being here, not helping the people we’ve helped,” Robert Guthrie said.
When Carrejo-Guthrie died in 2021, her son was appointed acting executive director. Six months later, “acting” was dropped from his title.
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But the organization’s founder hasn’t disappeared from Option Inc.’s office in downtown Hobbs. There are photos of Carrejo-Guthrie in several rooms throughout the building, watching over the organization like a patron saint.
“It was an honor being able to work with her,” Burke said. “Her and Robert definitely are different types of leaders, but both so great and very rooted in wonderful values. … If anything keeps a place like this open and meeting the demand, it’s leadership.”
