That’s right, everyone. My mom won a countdown in May, 2008!

The “Holy Christ in the Cornflakes! The Top 10 Oddball Jesus Sightings,” is, funny enough, not the worst thing on the internet that makes fun of my mom.

The Shark Guys say:

“In 1977, Maria Rubio, a housewife in Lake Arthur, New Mexico, was rolling up a burrito when she saw that the face of Jesus in the skillet burns on the tortilla. Rubio rushed out, told her friends and neighbors (Way to look like a crackpot neighbor: Run over next door and tell them to check out the face of a deity in a dish of Tex Mex) and soon formed a shrine for the tortilla, which a priest blessed.”

So many things wrong with this characterization of my mother and her discovery.

First off, my mom does not make Tex-Mex food. That’s just being irresponsible with inaccuracies and complete and utter blasphemy. Secondly, we lived in Lake Arthur, New Mexico.  We had very little neighbors to run to.

Below, we have another classic. Of course, this time, they go with the picture to your right, that captures my mom having a not so good day.

#ThanksObama

And the caption… really?

Maria Rubio with burrito?

According to this article, my mom was a bit of a trendsetter.  (I knew I got it from somewhere)

The one that started it all. Back in 1977, long before you could make a small fortune selling your miracle food on ebay, Jesus decided to pop up on a tortilla. Maria Rubio was making her husband breakfast when she found a thumbnail-sized image of Jesus on a tortilla. Visitors from all over came to the small town of Lake Arthur, New Mexico, to see the holy tortilla, which was kept in a shrine.

Then there was the Salina Journal from Salina, Kansas…

You know how my mom does it, yo! Page 16!

Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Back on Monday, June 14, 1982, this newspaper published an article titled, “thousands flock to “holy tortilla” shrine.”

Looks like a decent write up…at least from what I can tell from my magnifying glass.

As Maria Rubio’s youngest daughter, I got to say that it’s hard for me to do this research without feeling angry, upset, horrified, disgusted, sad, annoyed,…(you name it) about how my mom has been portrayed over the years.  Then there are the naysayers who will say, “well she asked for the publicity” to which I’d respond with, “um…no, she didn’t.”

But would that really solve anything?

What has been written about my mom in the last 37 years, has not always been pretty. In fact, it got harder to see and read with the invention of Google. But it also just means that this gives me a chance to set the record straight and validate the the 11,000 to 33,000 people, give or take (depending on what and where you read), who have entered my childhood home to share their story with my mom. This is the closest my mom will ever have to traveling the world, because people from all over and from all walks of life, made it a point to drop by and see her and that’s pretty special.

So the next time someone starts telling you this bizarre story about a woman with the face of jesus on a burrito, you set them straight and tell them it was on a flour tortilla, minus the filling.