Lost leader
After her death, Sheila Sepulveda’s name remained on the masthead of Ahora, the Spanish/English weekly newspaper.
If no one could bring themselves to remove her name, it was no surprise. She had held the newspaper together and kept it in business at a time when its survival was widely doubted, after the death of her husband Miguel in September 2000. Her own death came after a long fight against ovarian cancer.
Born in Seal Beach, Calif., in 1942, Sepulveda came to Nevada and spent her adolescence in Minden. She was a member of the Dangberg family, one of Douglas County’s most prominent families.
Her son Steve says the creation of Ahora was first suggested by his mother.
“She came up with the idea and my dad and her started it together. She was the visionary of the paper.”
At the time, the Latino population of Nevada was in low single digits. Today it’s almost 20 percent of the state’s population.
The newspaper became a fixture of community life, paving the way for other publications that followed, like La Voz Hispana and El Sol de Nevada. After Sheila’s death, the Ahora office was filled with flowers sent by admirers.