Obituary - Connie I. Rick

Connie I. Rick, 58, passed away due to natural causes Friday, April 26, 2024.

Cremation has taken place, and a celebration of Connie's life will be held at 1:00 p.m. Friday, May 3, 2024, at Belly Acres, 5297 72nd St. W, Havre. Be sure to dress for the weather and bring a lawn chair.  Holland & Bonine Funeral Home has been entrusted with arrangements.  

Please visit Connie's online memorial page to send a card or leave a message of condolence for her family at https://www.hollandbonine.com.

Connie was born January 26, 1966, in San Bernardino, CA, to Andrew and Josephine (Candelaria) Ojeda. She was born and raised in the Bay area, and she grew up cooking with her madre, abuela, and various tias. Connie collected in her head all of the various Mexican recipes and procedures, which resulted in her, on a regular basis, creating amazing Mexican culinary delights. This knowledge allowed her to create the best food in many varieties. In 2007, she opened Connie's Mexican Cuisine, and for a couple of years, Connie offered authentic home-cooked meals to the people of Havre.

After successfully accomplishing her pilot restaurant test period with very positive feedback and meeting and developing a relationship with the love of her life, Connie closed the pilot restaurant. Connie worked in both of Gary and Leo's bakeries, mostly decorating cakes for their customers. For about seven years, Connie worked at and managed the Grateful Bread Restaurant for Rick and Sheila, adding a breakfast menu including her delicious breakfast burritos for their customers in addition to their amazing sandwiches, soups, cookies, and breads.

Connie married her true love, Rod Rick, April 21, 2010, and soon after was working side by side with Rod in their glass and window company and their limousine business.

She was not afraid of hard work or hard people. Connie expected her subordinates to work as hard as herself and to always deliver great service to their customers. She would always walk the talk, coming from a hard-working family of beautiful people.

Connie also worked for a combined total of 10 years, between 1998 and 2023, at the local Holiday Gas Station and Convenience Store, where she enjoyed seeing what she referred to as her "regular customers." She was able to put her culinary skills to use there in a limited way to provide some foods for those customers until she resigned from her management position at the end of 2023.

Connie spent the last few months of her life preparing for a new venture she was planning to launch in June of 2024 – Connie's Creative Cuisine, a carry-out and delivery restaurant. Her special ordered food prep sink was just delivered today! We will now all miss out on the excellent meals she was very excited about producing for her many impending customers in Havre.

Connie was the devoted matriarch of her family with a constant drive to provide her grandchildren, and later great-grandchildren, with guidance and gifts that she believed would help them to better succeed in life. This quest was undoubtedly always her top concern.

Connie loved plants and flowers, and she always wanted to create an indoor commercial garden where she could grow food for her personal kitchen and any commercial food operation in which she might be involved. She always believed the food coming out of Mexico and her native California, where she worked with her whole family to harvest fruits and vegetables while growing up, was going to someday become unavailable or unaffordable.

She had several flower gardens at home with over 100 perennial flowers re-emerging each spring with new life. Her gardening highlight was going to the local greenhouses to get annuals and always more perennials to add to her many gardens.

Connie's favorite place to be was our beloved private family campground, Belly Acres, where she delighted in hanging out in a chaise lounge in the creek and watching the grandchildren collect an endless number of artifacts from historic Fort Assiniboine, our neighbor across and up the creek for a few miles. Connie spent her last couple of days on this earth getting the camp ready for the coming summer season.

Connie knew her days were numbered, however she was determined to continue to do what she loved most, create excellent foods to offer to all of us - her eager food fans.

She was preceded in death by her sons, Julian and Jose Garcia; parents, Andrew and Josephine Ojeda; and brothers, Phillip and Michael Ojeda.

Connie is survived by her husband, Rod Rick, of Havre; daughters, Tiffany Garcia of Great Falls, Charlye Garcia of Havre, Melissa (Matthew) Emge of Havre, and Madeline (Bryan) Bridgford of Joplin, Missouri; 13 grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; sisters, Ann Marie (Bob) Ketchum of Great Falls, and Judy Salas of Box Elder; brothers, Andrew (Liz) Ojeda of Reno, Nevada, and Alex Ojeda of Chinook; adopted daughter/niece, Dorinna Ojeda of Box Elder; and numerous aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, and other extended family and friends.