story by Ruth Nicolaus
The Idaho Cowboy Association roots run deep in Candida Eldridge’s family.
The breakaway roper is the third generation to be involved with the ICA.
Her grandparents, Tom and Betty Eddy, were part of the organization, her grandpa as a tie-down roper and team roper, and her grandma as a barrel racer, and her parents, Marlow and Audrey Eldridge, were also involved as contestants. In fact, when she was born, an ICA secretary made her a faux “membership card” to commemorate her birth.
A resident of Nampa, Idaho, Candida became an ICA member at the age of seventeen. She competed in high school rodeo and qualified for the state high school finals each year, her senior year in all four of her events (breakaway, barrel racing, goat tying and team roping).
At Blue Mountain Community College in Pendleton, Ore., and at Eastern Oregon University in La Grande, she competed two years collegiately and graduated from La Grande with a bachelors in business and accounting.
Now she works as a bookkeeper for a feedlot in Vale, Oregon. It’s about an hour’s drive from her home, but with technology, she’s able to do most of her work from home and goes into the office about twice a week.
Her breakaway horse, who is also her head horse, when she team ropes at jackpots, is Venom, a fourteen-year-old mare. As a three-year-old, the mare got her leg caught under a cable and “sawed on it all night long, trying to get it out,” Candida said. The next morning, when Marlow found her, he assumed she’d never recover from her injury. So the family doctored her and turned her out, and a year later, she was completely sound.
The horse is cinchy and likes to pull back, and she’s not a fan of needles and veterinarians, but she does her job well. Her name came about after she was bit by a rattlesnake as a yearling.
For fun, Candida likes to be on the water, wakeboarding and boating on the Snake River and at Payette Lake near McCall, Idaho.
Her beautiful name is from her great-grandma on her dad’s side, who was Spanish-Basque. Her dad is the only person allowed to call her “Candy.” Other people usually shorten the name to Dio.
Candida came into this year’s ICA finals after cutting off her left index finger at the first knuckle two weeks prior. She was tying up a young horse when he pulled back while her finger was in the knot. In about two weeks’ time, she relearned how to hold her coils and reins. At finals, she won the first round and placed fourth in the second round to win second in the average and second for year-end.
She also enjoys spending time with her siblings as well: brother Jaylen, who is nineteen, and sister, Rieta, age eighteen.
