The woman at the eye of the storm

A woman who admittedly listened to her boyfriend plot the demise of his former medical-practice associate and didn't tell police until it was too late.

Or a devoted mother who clawed her way up from humble beginnings through law school, only to have "a mistake of the heart" bring it all crashing down.

A complex and sometimes contradictory character, Lopez is a central figure in what has become one of Tucson's most sensational trials in decades — the case against Dr. Bradley Schwartz, accused of hiring a hit man to kill Dr. David Brian Stidham.

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Richard Gonzales didn't have to think twice. He knew Lourdes Salomón Lopez left the Pima County Attorney's Office in disgrace.

He knew she was about to be indicted by a federal grand jury on drug-fraud charges.

He knew, and still the longtime Tucson attorney hired her in August 2002.

Lopez is a genuine person and an excellent attorney who doesn't deserve to lose her license or be ridiculed, he said.

"I didn't regret it then, and I don't regret it now," said Gonzales, a prominent personal-injury attorney.

He doesn't care that Lopez is facing possible disbarment, or that she is accused of doing nothing to stop a notorious murder-for-hire.

"She made a mistake of the heart," he said.

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On Oct. 5, 2004, Dr. David Brian Stidham, a children's eye surgeon, was found dead outside his office on North First Avenue near River Road. He'd been stabbed 15 times and his skull had been fractured.

Three days later, Lourdes Lopez sat down with homicide detective Jill Murphy and told her she had a suspect in mind.

That interview resulted in two arrests, lost jobs for several Pima County prosecutors, a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Stidham's widow, and the attention of the national media.

On Tuesday, jury selection starts in the first-degree-murder trial of Schwartz — Lopez's former fiancé and the man she told detectives wanted Stidham dead. Schwartz is accused of hiring Ronald Bruce Bigger, who faces trial later, to kill Stidham.

Lopez is expected to be a key prosecution witness against Schwartz.

But just who is she, and how did this former prosecutor wind up on the witness stand instead of standing before it?

Lopez, 37, who now has a private law practice, declined to comment for this article, but those who agreed to talk about her said she ought not be judged by her taste in men.

"She's not a ditzy broad dancing on the string of some doctor's stethoscope," Gonzales said.

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A native Californian, Lopez grew up in Nogales, Ariz., before moving to Tucson with her parents and three sisters. She graduated from Cholla High School in 1986. A cross-country runner, she and her team went undefeated her senior year, before taking fifth at state.

Two years later, she married Danny Lopez, who would eventually die in a drug turf war years after he and Lourdes split.

By December 1992, when Lourdes Lopez graduated from the University of Arizona with a bachelor's degree in criminal justice administration, she and Danny had two children.

When Danny Lopez filed for divorce on Jan. 3, 1995, she was working as a receptionist and going to law school at the UA. Listed among their few assets were a 1979 Pinto station wagon and a 1989 Nissan Sentra.

That summer Gonzales hired Lopez for the first time to do research after consulting with her professors, who called her a leader among her peers.

"She didn't beat you over the head with the glass ceiling that she was trying to get through," Gonzales recalls, "and she didn't hit you over the head with the fact she was a minority and trying to overcome obstacles. She also didn't beat you over the head with the fact she was a single mother.

"The thing that was so easy to like about her was, you knew she was a self-motivated individual with high standards and she didn't have to tell you."

During law school, Lopez worked as a law clerk for Superior Court Judge John Leonardo and for the Pascua Yaqui tribe's prosecutors office.

David Benton and Joseph Vigil, who graduated with Lopez from UA Law in 1997, recall a good-hearted person devoted to her children.

"I admired her for her taking on the task of going to law school and taking care of a couple of kids," said Vigil, a deputy Maricopa County attorney.

After graduation, Lopez went back to the Pascua Yaqui tribe as a deputy prosecutor. For 13 months she prosecuted juveniles and adults alike.

She was hired by the Pima County Attorney's Office in 1999. Her daughter, Talisa, was 9 and her son, Daniel, was 7.

Like all young prosecutors, Lopez, then 30, started off working in the misdemeanor unit, known for its grueling schedule.

It's there that she met a handful of attorneys — Nicki DiCampli, Brad Roach and Paul Skitzki — who later had to fight for their jobs because Lopez confided in them before Schwartz's arrest.

"I call misdemeanors 'boot camp,' '' Roach said. "You work until 7, 8 o'clock at night and you work both days on the weekend because there's no other way to get the work done.

"You tend to get really close to the people you work with because you see them more than you do your family."

Roach remembers Lopez passing up chances to socialize. "As we got closer, I realized she had to work to make ends meet with the kids," he said.

Eventually, Lopez was promoted to trying property crimes and, later, sex crimes. She had the "it" factor right from the start, Roach said.

"You can be technically good. You can prepare cases well, but you have to have the ability to relate to a jury," Roach said. "If you can relate to a jury, you can make that jury want to listen to you. Lourdes has that."

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Lopez's life took a dramatic turn in December 2000 when her daughter was referred to Schwartz for eye surgery.

Soon, Lopez and Schwartz were dating.

According to court documents, Lopez says she didn't learn until later Schwartz was still married or that he'd spent time at Sierra Tucson for a prescription-drug addiction.

Dr. Stidham went to work in Schwartz's office in September 2001, around the same time Schwartz would later say he stopped using drugs.

Three months later, U.S. drug enforcement agents searched Schwartz's office.

The following September he, Lopez and office manager Laurie Espinoza were named in a 77-count federal indictment. Schwartz was accused of writing prescriptions in the women's names to get his hands on a painkiller and stimulant.

Knowing an indictment was inevitable, Lopez had already left the County Attorney's Office and was again working for Gonzales when Schwartz headed off to two rehab centers.

The federal judge ordered the lovers not to have contact until their cases were resolved, but court records show Lopez made a trip to Rush University in Chicago, where Schwartz was a patient, in January 2003.

Six months later, both were cited on suspicion of disorderly conduct, and Schwartz was also cited on suspicion of assault after a fight at the Carl's Jr. on Congress Street and Interstate 10.

Lopez told officers Schwartz choked and punched her when she refused to get out of his SUV after an argument on the freeway, eventually pulling her out of the vehicle, dragging her along the ground and tossing out her belongings.

Schwartz told officers he asked Lopez to get out of the SUV when she accused him of infidelity. He denied hitting her and accused Lopez of trying to bite him.

A witness reported seeing Schwartz choke Lopez and punch her in the face at least four times.

The case against both was dismissed that August. They also resolved their drug case, by agreeing to stay out of trouble and do community service.

By the end of January, Schwartz was divorced and Lopez and Schwartz were engaged.

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On March 9, 2004, Lopez's former husband, Danny, was murdered in Omaha, Neb.

Danny Lopez and his girlfriend, Esperanza Carranza, were traveling with two other people when gunmen pumped a dozen shots into their car over a $50,000 drug debt, Douglas County Prosecutor Leigh Ann Retelsdorf said.

The intended victim, a drug trafficker, lived, but Danny Lopez and a woman were killed.

Retelsdorf said Lopez was "kind of an easy-going guy. He was obviously willing to go into the drug trade, but I didn't get the impression that he was the violent, ruthless type."

Jurors can expect to hear more about Danny Lopez. Carranza is expected to testify she believes Schwartz asked him to kill Stidham. Stidham's photo and business card were found in Lopez's wallet when he died.

Lourdes Lopez told authorities she heard rumors of a plot between her ex and Schwartz after she broke up with Schwartz in May 2004. Until then, she simply thought Schwartz and Lopez had become friendly for the sake of her children.

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Lourdes Lopez told sheriff's detectives Schwartz had talked for months about having Stidham killed. He'd ask her about police investigative methods and discuss various scenarios in which Stidham could die.

She told them Schwartz once asked her what would happen if child pornography were found in Stidham's office.

Although she didn't think he'd really have Stidham killed, Lopez admitted she asked her former fiancé, firefighter Jeff Fairbanks, to call Stidham anonymously to warn him. The call was never made.

Lopez said she also discussed Schwartz's threats with former colleague and prosecutor Skitzki, who maintains she only told him about the threats after the fact.

Lopez told Detective Murphy she tried to get Schwartz to let go of his anger.

Schwartz refused, Lopez said, insisting it was Stidham's fault he had to go through rehab, submit to urine tests, meet with federal pretrial service officers, report to the medical board and rebuild his practice.

Besides telling him that having someone killed was morally wrong, Lopez told detectives she also tried to be practical, saying hired killers always want more money after the job is done.

"They always have something over you. There's always gonna be somebody pressing you when you least expect it," the police report quotes her as saying. "The police always have an angle you never think of. (He'd say) 'Oh, no. The police aren't that smart.'"

Lopez said their breakup wasn't a clean one. He helped her set up a law office and she helped with his financial books. Her kids still visited him.

"It's like I tried to completely break it off, and I couldn't do it … there's just something wrong with me on that level," Lopez said. "I love him. I know that I can't ever trust him or be married to him, but I love him to death."

"She's not a ditzy broad dancing on the string of some doctor's stethoscope."

Richard Gonzales