'It's fine. I'm fine. Everything is fine.' Family and city pay respects to late APD officer

Roughly 400 people paid their respects on Monday to Albuquerque police officer Bianca Quintana, who was killed by a hit-and-run driver in the South Valley on Aug. 1.

Authorities say Quintana was struck while off duty and walking, that the driver fled the scene and has not been found. The incident is being investigated by the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office. Quintana was 31 years old.

“Hopefully somebody will come turn themselves in because it’s hard. It’s really hard,” Bianca’s uncle Tony Alderette said before Monday’s celebration of life at Legacy Church-Central Campus. “How can they be living with what they did? How can somebody live day by day knowing that they took somebody’s life?

“Just come forward and say, ‘OK, hey I did it,’ and that hasn’t happened. One day, hopefully. Much better sooner than later.”

Some people who came to service wore white T-shirts with Quintana’s badge number on the front and her softball uniform number 22 and name on the back. On the sleeve, the shirt read, “It’s fine. I’m fine. Everything is fine.”

“Those are the words that she lived by,” David Quintana, Bianca’s husband, said during his eulogy. “Like each and every one of us, she had struggles, she had challenges, obstacles, conflicts in life. She managed them daily. To her, it really didn’t matter the challenges that she was facing, because she cared so much for others and wanted to do everything she possibly could to ensure that everybody else was OK.”

Bianca served with the Los Lunas Police Department before joining Albuquerque Police Department in 2022. She worked in APD’s Foothills Area Command.

“Her desire to become an officer stemmed from her desire to help people,” her online obituary said. “In every facet of her life, she wanted to help those in need and decided that becoming an officer would give her the best opportunity to do so.”

David Quintana said he remembered them leaving a family barbecue with leftovers. On the way home, Bianca told him to bring the food to a group of unhoused people who lived down the road. After handing over the food, she left some of the people business cards with her phone number on it.

A couple of days later, David said, Bianca came home excited after helping an unhoused person who reached out to her.

“That’s who Bianca was,” he said, “and that’s why I fell in love with her as hard and easily as I did.”

Her sergeant, Albert Simmons, said he will miss many things including her loving heart and sense of humor — even the times she would put Dunkin’ Donuts on his desk despite him telling her to “knock it off.”

But “most of all, I’m going to miss my little sister,” he said.

MariaIsabelle Dominguez said her sister was a hero — defined, she said, as someone willing to sacrifice to help others without the consideration of their own safety.

“It didn’t matter what she was up against,” Dominguez said. “She had this hunger to be better every day, whether it was in school, being a mom, or an even better police officer. She was unstoppable.”

Mayor Tim Keller said the city declared Sept. 9 to be “Bianca Quintana Day, in remembrance of the life that she lived.”

“She never sought attention or the spotlight, yet she was a rock, always there for others,” Keller said.

A way people can honor her, he said, is by “devoting ourselves to our community” and families like she did.