Two weeks ago, 33-year-old Luis Barajas was sitting in a Broncos community-partnership meeting when a surprise fell out of the sky.
Allie Engelken, the organization’s VP of community impact, told the room she had an announcement. Barajas’ wife Caroline and their children came strolling through the door of their conference room. Barajas, a partnership marketing coordinator for the Broncos, sat there in confusion.
“What is going on right now?” he said he thought at the time.
That day, Engelken told Barajas that Broncos owner Carrie Walton Penner had selected him as the club’s 2025 Salute to Service nominee — the NFL’s effort to recognize members of the military across all 32 teams — in a twist he never saw coming.
“Never in my wildest,” as Barajas put it. Not when he was a boy in El Centro, California, staring up at Blue Angels twisting across the desert skies, dreaming of one day sitting in a cockpit. Not when he was a tire technician at Costco more than a decade ago, unsure where life was taking him.
Certainly not in his years aboard the USS Georgia, floating below sea level, a submarine home base 2,000 miles away from Denver.
“Quite honestly — never really had this on the map when I grew up,” Barajas said, who has worked with the Broncos since an initial internship in 2022.
“But life,” he continued a couple of sentences later, “comes at you in different ways, right?”
After five years and four overseas deployments as a fire control technician for the Navy, Barajas earned a degree in business administration and marketing from the University of Colorado and joined the Broncos on an internship. A year later, he was hired full-time and now manages the Broncos’ partnership with USAA — ironically, the organization that presents the NFL’s Salute to Service honors.
“You just kinda go through that internal change of — relearning your new purpose or your new duty,” Barajas said, “and definitely seeking another team was a big desire of mine.”
His worst day with the Broncos, as Barajas joked, couldn’t sniff his worst day in the Navy. And years later, in a much different role in Denver, he’s still wired with a certain focus: the itch in the back of his head that he has a job to do, and accounts to manage, and an organization to represent. Without excuse.
“I just needed a shot,” Barajas said. “And fortunately, the Broncos gave me a shot.”
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