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O J A I M AG A Z I N E | SUMMER 2025
He wasn’t supposed to live, not after thousands of volts of electricity burned through his body in an industrial accident. Vaquero Bobby Yanez not only lived, but as soon as he left the hospital two months later, he got back on a horse and competed in rodeos for the next 50 years. In 2015, Bobby, from Oak View, was named Fiesta Honorary Vaquero during Santa Barbara’s Old Spanish Days, an honor he never imagined receiving after the accident that nearly claimed his life. Thirty-five at the time of the accident, Bobby was a cowboy, husband, and father of two boys. “I was in the hospital for two months. I didn’t think I would ever come out of the hospital after I got burned, electrocuted,” he admitted. Bobby, who turns 99 on Aug. 11, confessed, “I thought that was the end.” He still remembers the life-threatening event when a boom on a cable hit a high line from the truck operated by a co-worker: “I was standing on the ground and it knocked the nails out of the shoes and burnt my hands. My finger was burnt so bad they cut that off. My little toe, they cut that off. I couldn’t eat for two weeks, and a girl come in and fed me because my hands were burned so bad. They would come and cut all the dry skin off my back, my hands, my fingers.
by DAVID LABELLE