Lupo Masden: Saving lives, one at a time

LAS VEGAS -- I can't remember the first time I witnessed Jody Lupo Masden's compassion toward others.

There have been so many times over the past (roughly) 23 years of friendship, I've lost count.

The phrase "do unto others..." could have a caricature of Lupo Masden attached to it.

Raised by her loving parents Joe and Sandy Lupo - two giving and caring individuals who have been pillars of the community long before I was born - the former Bishop Gorman softball star has always put others before her. She came from a time in Las Vegas when community and loyalty and commitment meant something. When "it takes a village to raise a child" was a true mantra in Southern Nevada, no matter how close-knit your family was - there was always an alternative outside the household.

When recognizing the impact of athletics on females while discussing National Girls and Women in Sports Day, which was celebrated on Feb. 3 this year, it's hard to ignore how Lupo Masden's been empowered by her sports background when witnessing the effect she has on reformed youths as a juvenile probation officer.

"My whole life I've had someone - a parent, a coach, my Godfather, someone in the community - that I could lean on, that I could ask questions to, that helped raise me in the community," she said during a recent Zoom session with WGRamirez.com. "I feel what the youth today are missing is that close-knit feeling. The way that you have people pulling for you - like a team."

A team. It's what she knows, and always has known. It's how she applies her daily emotional grind when dealing with juveniles who have struggled as products of their environment and simply need the right outlet to find their way back into society.

It's a life Lupo Masden said she's found a passion for - encouraging, uplifting, and teaching kids the right ways to do things in life, after making them recognize their importance in her life.

How passionate?

She and her husband, Aaron, answered seven questions. She fought back tears on six of them.

It's not as if I haven't seen or heard Lupo Masden cry, considering I've known her family since her days of roping line drives over softball fences in the 1990s.

Happy tears, boyfriend tears, hitting slump tears, I've seen and shared them all.

"She's got amazing tear ducts - they don't dry up," Aaron Masden said.

I distinctly remember the leaving for college tears, in 1999... oh wait, that was me.

I, too, come from a time in Las Vegas when loyalty in the community meant something, and the Lupos have been there for me as much as I've been there for one of the most influential officers at the Clark County Juvenile Probation Center.

Which is why I've never been surprised to see how a girl molded by sports - someone whose father played for the first UNLV football team to ever play at the school's first-ever venue, now known as Sam Boyd Stadium - was able to take her experiences as a local all-star softball player and key contributor at Wichita State, and transition those experiences into her career.

Those kids, those juveniles others may reject as delinquents, they're her team.

And she'll always be their head coach, for life.

TRUST, RESPECT

Lupo Masden started her career after college in Clark County's sexually exploited youth division, working with young girls who were either forced onto the streets or felt they had no other choice but to lead that lifestyle as a teenager.

The first step in earning their trust, these juveniles who have lost any sense of what it actually means to trust somebody, is to show them respect. Their lives have been hardened in the streets, so she knows she's fallen behind a long line of individuals that include pimps, drug dealers, gang members, murderers - all people who found a way to infiltrate any sort of innocence they once had.

"Seeing young girls growing up in this town and making tough decisions, this town can swallow you up," Lupo Masden said. "I found a passion to take a role to build other kids up and give them the opportunities that Vegas gave me."

After paying them the respect they deserve, but never got, the next step was to become the consistency they need. This can be tough because part of the job is keeping just enough distance that she doesn't get entrenched personally and emotionally.

I know, the woman with the tear ducts not getting emotionally attached. Good luck with that.

Especially when the kids see Lupo's genuine heart, and they become dependent on her for every crisis, big or small. Their lives have changed with different people now telling them what to do, barking orders while they're living in county facilities, rehabilitating their lives.

So, the best thing Lupo said she can do is simply show up, always be there, and never turn her back.

Ever.

TEAM MOM

Her connection with Aaron Masden is no accident, far beyond the diehard Vegas Golden Knights fans and Goldendoodle parents they happen to be.

A big believer in her faith, Lupo Masden says it's no coincidence her partner in life shares the same empathy and understanding toward his job at Spring Mountain Youth Camp, a juvenile facility that houses male youth between the ages of 12 and 18, all who have been adjudicated for delinquent acts by the Juvenile Court Judge.

Aaron Masden is a juvenile probation officer and the head football coach at the facility.

You saw the movie Gridiron Gang? To a degree, Aaron Masden is The Rock.

For him, Lupo Masden is his rock.

"One of the biggest things I've learned working with these kids from her is you never really know what you're gonna say or do that's gonna impact somebody's life," he said. "That can be for the positive or the negative. She lives that day-in and day-out. Her genuine generosity and kindness to others is really inspiring.

"She knows how to rally people together."

This is why she assumes her role on the sidelines as Team Mom for her husband's Eagles, which holds the distinction of shocking Pahranagat Valley in the 2016 Class 1A state championship while bringing an end to the Panthers' national eight-man record 104-game winning streak.

Aaron Masden said watching and feeling Lupo's compassion toward humanity, in general, has helped him with his job, allowing him to take a positive perspective daily to the facility, which is situated just within the Mt. Charleston range.

And when Masden's boys have served their time on the mountain, they're assigned back through Lupo's department for the duration of their term. Generally, they get one-year probation and work on a point system. They transition back into society within four to six months and serve the remainder of their probation at home and assigned to a probation center.

Lupo Masden supervises one of four field-probation offices, but she is free to visit any of them if she wants to check in with any of her husband's former football players.

"And they're always welcome to come see me," she said. "They can always count on me to follow through with their needs in the community."

And that's important to her since she said there's always a chance the youth they're supervising won't make it; so any success is a success.

Aaron Masden said 57 kids who have been on his football team have ended up dead or in prison - around a 19% ratio of roughly 300 players.

"That's not a stat we like to keep, but it's also motivation so we know our work is important," Lupo Masden said. "So, to him, if these kids wouldn't have met us, if they wouldn't have had our support, if they wouldn't have been on the team - 100% were on their way to that."

That, again, meaning prison or dead.

Per their research, it's also shown if they can get youths out of the hardest times of their lives, when they feel alone, and get them to a point they can choose what they want their lives to look like, they'll be successful individuals in society.

She can't pinpoint anyone she feels she's made a lifelong impact on, especially with the numerous teen-aged girls she's saved from rough lives, but feels proud in being invited to big events in their lives. An occasional phone call for a baby shower, or to share an adult-life experience, or maybe just to talk.

"I think just the checking in is what validates my support to them, and it validates them as people," Lupo said, her voice once again cracking with emotion over the difference she's made in so many lives. "We're all the same. We might not look the same, but we all want to be loved, we all want to be validated, we all want to be heard, we all want to be seen.

"I get just as much out of that, as they get out of it."

Is it any wonder she can't keep her tear ducts dry?